it doesn't hurt
by wildflowers
Summary: fuuko. anorexia. cutting. depression. *may be triggering.*
1. part first - fall - chapter one

"How can you hide from what never goes away?" – Heraclitus 

Part First – Fall – Chapter One

**[Kirisawa Fuuko]**

I rubbed my shoulders, my breath white in the winter chill. I hadn't expected the temperature to drop so much when I left the house this morning, so I had only the thinnest of windbreakers on to guard against the cold. Still, there was a smile on my lips as I stood on the library steps and surveyed my surroundings. Surely this must be the most pleasant time of the year, compared to the humidity and damp of spring, the oppressive summer heat, the rot of autumn and even the stillness and snow of deep winter. Now, though, the sky was clear, the air was fresh, the ground was cool and clean. The crispness of the atmosphere seemed to hold promise; of life, joy, excitement. 

I tucked my hands into my pockets and started down the steps, eager to get home and start on the books I had just checked out. Much as I would have liked to remain where I was, the thought of curling up next to the heater, all toasty and warm, with a book in hand, was even more tantalising. 

Suddenly I tensed, my nerves tingling. Someone was behind me. Someone was approaching. Slowly, slowly, I turned around, for it would not be wise to have my back to a possible adversary. 

"Oh! It's you, Mi-chan. You gave me a bit of a fright there."

He shrugged, ever reticent. He was dressed, as usual, in long-sleeved shirt and pants, and a black trenchcoat was slung over his right arm. His hair was drawn back in a low ponytail, but a few stray wisps had escaped to frame his face. The sunlight reflected flowers in his clear eyes. He looked good, of course, and the slight flush from the cold lent colour to his cheeks that could not but improve his looks. 

"Take it." He offered me his coat, his manner brusque. "You look cold." 

I gratefully accepted his offer, realising I was clenching my jaw to prevent my teeth from chattering. It was impossible not to grin when I imagined how some of his admirers would react to this kindness of his. How they longed for such closeness as we had! 

The coat fit well, almost as if it had been made for me. He was significantly – though not excessively – taller than I was, but this hung no looser than any of my clothes would. Apart from height, he was the same size as I.

This made me think.

I stared at him as he walked to the left and slightly in front of me. His was a profile that was not unfamiliar to me, us having spent as much time as we had together. It was only now, though, that I took notice of his features. His jaw line was sharp, his cheekbones defined, his collarbones protruding. Even through his shirt, I could see how his shoulders were pointed, so unlike my rounded ones. He was, bluntly put, freaking skinny! 

I have heard my schoolmates gush over him. I recalled the words they used: slim, sleek, lithe. Thin words. A sudden streak of envy made me swallow hard. Unsurprising. After all, what girl doesn't want to be described in such a manner? It was odd, though, that I should feel that way, for I had never thought of myself as particularly fat. I was not concerned about my physical appearance, and I supposed I was satisfied with the way I looked. Besides, I wasn't just 'any girl'. I was no hair-twirling, lipstick-smearing, nail-filing bimbo. I wasn't like that. 

Why then did it make me jealous, to know he was thinner than I? Strange. I put the thought aside, choosing instead to enjoy the pleasant walk home. The weather was indeed lovely, and it seemed to me that even my companion was in better spirits than usual.

Winter was coming on fast.

I glanced at the mirror as I pulled on my t-shirt, my wet hair flicking drops of water onto its surface. _Fuuko, you have much to be thankful for_, I told myself. _You are young, pretty, slim, smart. You wield a high-level madougu. You're popular. You fight well. Best of all_ – I laughed a little at this – _you eat tons of food and you aren't fat._

I could name scores of people who would readily admit to envying me. I was confident, self-assured, and poised. My spirits were always light, and I had been blessed with a dexterity of mind that saw me through all sorts of unexpected situations. I was the sort who would go on after high school to achieve Great Things. 

I smiled at my reflection. _You lucky girl_. 

After the excitement of the summer, what with the Ura Batou Satsujin and all, I had returned home to discover I had lost five pounds. It was a pleasant surprise, for I had not intended to do so. I turned and pinched my t-shirt, but the weight loss was not obvious. I shrugged; no matter, for I had neither need nor wish to lose weight. Certainly, though, I didn't _mind_. What girl would? Even a tomboy like me was pleased. 

Even a tomboy like me, already so contented. I had everything I wanted. What else could I need?

**[Sakoshita Yanagi]**

I didn't notice when we slipped into the routine, I just knew it was there. I used to walk to school alone, but now Recca walked alongside me. He would appear suddenly by my side, and we would acknowledge each other. My love and my protector.

And so too did my other friends, each just as dear, join me. Here were Domon and Fuuko, joking and laughing; here was Mikagami, resisting our efforts to pull him into our mirth. The five of us did make unlikely friends, but friends we were. Recca was ever brash and impetuous, but warm-hearted. Domon was reliable and faithful, but at times not too bright. Mikagami, so very talented and brilliant, was taciturn and silent. Fuuko was like no other girl I had ever met, and sometimes seemed more a boy, but she was always ready with a sincere smile, and was more intelligent than she let on. And I, I was shy and weak, compared to the lot, but I do believe their influence on myself had already begun to be obvious, for I was becoming more and more outgoing. 

Scarce a year ago, I would have thought it impossible for characters such as ours to form such strong friendships. Time, though, has a way of overturning our every assumption, and it was with these four that I walk to school.

I loved my friends. Even the merciless ribbing Recca and I received for being in a relationship did not chafe as I had thought it would, and was no difficulty to endure. At any rate, it was all in fun, and who was I to begrudge these people their little jokes? 

That day, I thought I noticed something different in the tone of Fuuko's teasing. There was something in her voice that seemed to hint at a deep sadness, and beneath the sparkle of her eyes seemed to lie a secret grief. Her laughter appeared somewhat forced and empty. 

My imagination, perhaps. It was ridiculous to even suspect Fuuko wasn't the cheerful, jocular teenager she has always been. Admittedly, there are people who seem happy on the outside while crying inside, but I doubted Fuuko was one of those people. This was Fuuko we're talking about, after all! That her laughter could be clouded was completely, utterly inconceivable. 

I looked at her again.

"Hime-chan!" she cried, like Recca often did, "Let's go to the ice-cream place after school? Huh? Please? Pretty pretty please with a frosting and a fire dragon on top?" A big grin stretched across her face, she clung onto Mikagami's arm, pulling him towards her. The effect was terribly comic, and even Recca, being parodied so mercilessly, could not suppress a smile.

Recca was trying to shush her, Domon was holding his sides in laughter, and Fuuko herself put both arms around Mikagami's waist and started making kissing sounds. He cocked an eyebrow at her, but there was a twinkle in his eye. 

I looked at her yet again.

Definitely my imagination.

I think.

**[Kirisawa Fuuko]**

I don't know what's happening to me. I feel the same, like nothing in me has changed. Perhaps that's true. But when I think back to my life before the past summer, I know it isn't. I am changed. I feel like two different Fuukos. The 'Before' Fuuko – brash and naïve, very much still a child; and the 'After' Fuuko – the Fuuko I now am. 

But I think I am the same, outwardly. None of my friends have commented on any change in myself, so I must be the same. I guess it is just the way I perceive the world that is different. That sort of thing. 

I'm really quite confused. I wonder who I am.

Are these sorts of thoughts normal for teenagers? That must be it. I guess the events of the summer were a catalyst for my hormones to develop. Ha. Maybe I'm entering a sort of mental and psychological adolescence, and my mind is catching up with the puberty my body begun years ago. 

"So, Fuuko, what do you think? Will you be free?" Yanagi's soft brown eyes seemed to probe into my mind, even though she was merely asking me my opinion on something so banal as what we should do for the weekend. 

"I have nothing else to do anyway," I gave her my largest grin, "I'm totally fine with what you guys want." I, of course, had been lost in though and had not the slightest idea what it was I had agreed to. 

"Fantastic!" Koganei's fangs flashed, "Then it's all settled. We'll meet for lunch and then go the amusement park. Don't be late, okay, you guys?" He tugged at Recca's left arm. (The right one was encircled around Yanagi, as usual.) "C'mon, niichan, we'd better be getting on home, or your dad will have a fit."

Yanagi smiled at their disappearing backs. "He's pretty mature for a kid his age, isn't he?" 

"You'd think he was older than Recca sometimes, rather than it being the other way around." I said dryly, laughing at Yanagi's blush.

"Well, er, he can be mature at times too, you know, and, er," Yanagi stammered a little. "And anyway, I guess that's just the way he is, you know? And I love him for it!" She beamed at me as her words came out in a rush.

I couldn't help but burst out laughing at this earnest affirmation. "You are the cutest, Yanagi, you really are." Inside, though, I had to admit that I was not a little envious of her. Her relationship with Recca was a fairy-tale romance, complete with knight in shining armour. Sure, we all recognise his flaws and some of us (i.e. Mi-chan) think he's irritating. But what was important was the way he loved Yanagi: selflessly, completely, unequivocally. To be so in love and so cherished is, I think, what everybody wants, but hardly ever gets. Yanagi was so, so lucky.

"Yanagi's so lucky to have Recca," Domon said. His hands were stuck deep in his pockets as we walked home together. 

"Yeah, I was just thinking that," I agreed. "But high school relationships rarely last beyond graduation. You think theirs will?"

"Yes." His answer was immediate, soft, but certain. "They have something special. They're different."

"I wish…"

"Hm?"

"Oh, it's nothing. I just wish sometimes I could have a relationship like theirs too. Wouldn't it be lovely, Domon? To belong to someone who belongs to you. I'd love that. But… You know what, somehow I don't think I am suited to being loved."

He smiled at me. "That's rubbish! You never used to talk like this, Fuuko. You're different now."

I hit him on the head, hard, so that he yelled out in protest. "Not that different," I laughed as he rubbed the bump.

I knew they all thought Domon liked me. I think he did, too, at one point, but I realised soon enough that it was just a crush. He realised it too, but he still continued to tease me from time to time in front of the others. It was all just a little harmless fun. 

"Seriously, Fuuko, if you could pick any one we knew right now to be your boyfriend, who would it be?"

My answer was quick. "Definitely not you!" We laughed again. 

I'm like that. I always smile. In a fight, I always struggle to get up again and flash my opponent a confident grin that hides my fear. When I'm hurt, I laugh and shrug it off, never mind that I'm dying inside. It's better that way, I think, because nobody likes sad people. It's much nicer to be around someone who's always happy. 

My laughter now concealed my shock. In a way, I was surprised by myself, for I'd never really thought of myself as the 'relationship' type, and I didn't think I was exactly girlfriend material. But more than that, I was shocked at what my answer to Domon's question was. 

For some reason, Mi-chan's name had been at the tip of my tongue. 

Does this mean I like him?

I've never really thought about it.

**[Ishijima Domon]**

Fuuko was different. Really different. She had changed so much, though it didn't really show. 

I didn't think anyone else had noticed. 

I didn't think she had, either.

**[Kirisawa Fuuko]**

I didn't believe myself. I was completely incredulous. No way did I like anybody. Much less Mr. 'Absolute Zero' himself. 

Actually, he was quite nice. In a way. I guess. Kind of. Once you got to know him. Sometimes. 

But he was a real good catch. He would make the perfect boyfriend, apart from the obvious and very critical problem with his personality. He was gorgeous, intelligent, rich, talented, so on, so on. Everyone knew that. I knew, too, that he could be gentle and caring. Look at the way he rescued Koganei from Mokuren. In fact, he…

Aii. I mentally slapped myself. That was no way to be thinking about him! Sure, I respected him and valued his companionship, but to regard him as more than a friend was not what either of us wanted or needed. 

_I had to admit, though, that if I had to choose someone to like, I would pick him._


	2. chapter two

Chapter Two

**[Kirisawa Fuuko]**

I couldn't sleep. It was really frustrating. I wanted to sleep, and I was tired of lying in bed doing nothing, my mind whirring away. I felt trapped – I wanted to sleep but couldn't; I wanted to get up and do something, but couldn't, because I needed to sleep or I would be too tired the next day.

I started thinking about the book a classmate had lent me. The main character was a girl, an ice-skater, who secretly sliced her forearm up with a pair of scissors. 

I remembered thinking how creepy it was to do that, and how strange it sounded. In a grotesque way, it made more sense to commit suicide, because at least in that there was a palpable means of escape. But to do that sort of thing? It seemed to me that it only increased the pain. Didn't it?

Still, the image of the tormented girl snipping away at her flesh like it was just so much meat was a haunting one. 

I shivered, pulling the blankets over my head. I turned over in bed, still trying to sleep. I needed something to occupy myself with. Maybe – maybe I would go on a diet. That would help, I thought. The feeling of having lost weight was so wonderful, and besides I could stand to lose a couple more pounds.

**[Hanabishi Recca]**

_Fuuko was starting to act strange. I wondered if something was going on._


	3. part second - winter - chapter three

Part Second – Winter – Chapter Three

**[Kirisawa Fuuko]**

I didn't know when it really began. I knew I had started to change – evolve, maybe – after that strange summer, but I couldn't place a finger on when I realised I was, well, like this. 

My perceptions of the world were different. My perceptions of myself were different. My perceptions of myself in relation to the world were different. I was different. 

I couldn't really describe how. It would be easy but inaccurate to say something like: then – happy/good/smile; now – sad/bad/frown. But that wouldn't work, and it was so much more complicated than that besides. 

For starters, I was moody a great deal of the time. I never seemed to have much energy, even though I was now sleeping so much more than I used to. I had trouble thinking straight sometimes. I felt so, well, blah. It was awful.

It wasn't the only thing. I didn't want to go out with the rest anymore, and when I did go for lunch or hung out with them, I didn't – couldn't – enjoy myself. After a while, I hardly saw them, and I think it was better for them, because I was irritable most of the time anyway, and I would snap at them for little or no reason. Nothing seemed to satisfy me. 

What was happening to me? 

Another thing – I accepted that I had a full-blown crush on Mikagami. Perhaps I had dwelled too much on the "what if"s, and ultimately, they came true. It was as if I had challenged myself to like him, and unconsciously incorporated the challenge into myself. Every time I was with him, it was on the tip of my tongue – tell him, Fuuko – to tell him I liked him, but somehow I never mustered up enough courage to do that. 

That was good, I suppose. It would be terribly embarrassing after I told him, and a perfectly fine friendship would be ruined.

**[Hanabishi Recca]**

"What's up with the girl, anyway? She never wants to be around us nowadays. What, are we not good enough for her?" I flopped onto the concrete park bench next to my princess, my love, my light, my dearest.

"You really think so, Recca?" She peered at me, eyes large. "Perhaps she just wants some time to herself." 

"Maybe so, Hime. I think that what she needs is a large dose of good, old-fashioned romance!" I announced. "You think Domon's free?"

My wonderful sweetheart screwed her nose up in the cutest way. "I don't think they'd make a very compatible couple, Recca."

I had to agree with her. Don't get me wrong, Domon's a great person, but on reflection he didn't seem to be Fuuko's type. 

"I know! What about Raiha?"

Yanagi nodded, linking her arm through mine. "Perhaps. But you really think he's what's good for her right now?"

"Of course!" I, Hanabishi Recca, was a genius. "Dr. Raiha, all set to clear up Fuuko's case of the blues. It's perfect!"

**[Mikagami Tokiya]**

They never asked me. I would have put my foot (and Ensui too, if it came to that) down at such nonsense, but no, they never asked. 

**[Kirisawa Fuuko]**

I was curled up in my bed, staring into space. It felt good to be here, alone, doing nothing, thinking nothing. Numb.

The phone rang.

I groaned, not wanting to drag myself out of bed. The ringing was, however, not only persistent, it was downright irritating. Muttering a little to myself, I pushed the sheets aside and went to answer it. 

"Hello, Fuuko?"

I nearly dropped the handset, surprised. "Raiha?" 

He would pick me up at seven, Saturday night. 

I didn't really feel like going to all the hassle of dressing up for a date and going out, but the situation was exceptional enough that it piqued my interest. At least it made me interested in doing something besides moping. 

I didn't wonder about why he called. Recca had looked so impossibly mischievous and full of himself that morning in school, I knew he was behind it somehow. I wondered about the why – but then decided it took too much energy and forgot about it all. After all, Recca was behind it, so I needn't be suspicious of Raiha's intentions. I could trust Recca not to be malicious and instigate something that would disadvantage me.

The dinner was fantastic. Raiha was the perfect gentleman; charming, witty, entertaining. We ate at a nice restaurant (thanks for unknowingly footing the bill, Kurei) and went for a walk in the park. I had fun.

For the first time in a long while, I felt truly seventeen. I felt more alive. There were butterflies in my stomach. There was chemistry. 

For the first time in a long while, I didn't think about Mikagami. 

Something was beginning. We started talking more, on the phone, after that night. We went out a couple of times. 

It was wonderful being with him. He made me feel so nice, like I was someone important. When I was with him, I felt more free. We didn't feel the things that divided us. I wasn't Hokage; he wasn't Uruha. I wasn't Fuujin; he wasn't Raijin. I wasn't a little kid; he wasn't a killer. We were just two people, together. 

It was so wonderful.

**[Sakoshita Yanagi]**

It was nice to see Fuuko looking more like herself again. I guess Recca was right in asking Raiha to take her out. Still, there was an insistent little voice at the back of my head that kept reminding me that Raiha, no matter how nice he seemed, was at the end of the day an Uruha, and loyal to Kurei.

It was worth the nagging worry, though, to see her so happy.

**[Kirisawa Fuuko]**

I giggled, twirling the telephone cord between my fingers. It was nice to talk to him, and he called as much as he could, which was very often. 

"You know what, Raiha, I'm bored. There's nothing to do." I was perched at the edge of the table.

"Oh, that hurts! Does that mean I'm boring? You don't want to talk to me?" His voice resonated lightly, pleasantly in my ear. 

"No, of course not." I thought a little. "You want to go for a drink or a bite or something?"

"Huh? Now?"

"Yeah!"

"But it's almost midnight."

"Is that a problem?" I pretended to sulk. 

"Well, not for me, but you're – "

"Okay then! I'll wait for you outside my place in ten minutes. Don't be late!"

I was exhilarated. It seemed so bohemian, in a way. To go out whenever I wanted, even if it was in the middle of the night. I was having so much fun with him!

I leaned with my back against the lamppost, yellow light pooled at my feet, as I waited for Raiha. 

Our friendship was different from other kinds; it was not love, or anything of the sort, but it wasn't platonic, either. We never really discussed it, but it was still evident. There seemed to be a path that guided out relationship, and we both knew where we were headed: we were more than friends, but not quite lovers. Yet.

I, for one, was perfectly content to let it do so. It made my life so much more interesting, if anything. I knew this was a relationship that wouldn't last long, but I was just enjoying the here and now. 

A solitary car purred up the street, glistening a deep black under the intermittent gleam. I smirked to myself; Raiha's situation was beneficial to the provision of the finer things in life, such as this limousine. I pulled open the door and hopped in.

He drove to an all-night diner, where he very quickly knocked back a couple of drinks, and ordered a plate of some inconsequential greasy thing, which we shared. He offered to buy me a can of beer too, but I declined. 

Whatever it is we talked about, I knew even then I would never remember. All I could think of was him; was his beautiful eyes and the way I seemed to swim in them. All I could feel was his presence, and I was conscious of nothing but the nearness of the two of us. The words were superfluous. 

We walked into the night, the air fresh with the crisp of deep winter. The sky was tinged with the eternity of the winter solstice, the longest night of the year. There was a park nearby, and we found ourselves headed in its direction. I don't think I spoke much; I was satisfied in drinking in the situation and enjoying the richness of the whole thing.

I thrilled in the moment. All that was in the past, all the fighting and the misery, all was behind us. It was okay to be with Raiha now. I had by my side one of the most talented ninja in the entire world; we could walk and talk and laugh together and it was okay. 

But he wasn't Raiha the ninja any more; he wasn't Raiha the enemy, the one I was fated to fight. He wasn't any of these people. He was just Raiha the friend. Raiha. It was so easy to talk to him, and he knew so much about me – even that I liked Mikagami, something I had never told even Yanagi. He knew how I had been feeling down for the longest time. He knew so many things about me, but he never tried to give advice or anything of the sort, or analyse me, because that would have broken the spell. All he did was listen. He just let me pour myself out, and he took everything in, and accepted it, in this way thanking me for the trust I put in him. 

He was gorgeous. 

We sat on a park bench, floating on a comforting togetherness, talking about everything and nothing. There was nobody around, and the air was silent and heavy, muted with the weight of the season.

"Fuuko…"

"Hm?"

"If Mikagami asked you to be his girlfriend, would you say yes?"

If only he would! But I didn't know him well enough, nor did he me. And even though I wanted him so badly, I knew that we would never be a couple. 

"No."

"How about Domon?"

"You know it already. No."

"Well then. How about Raiha?"

I turned to look at him. "You?"

He held out his hand to me. "Would you say yes if he asked?"

I placed my hand in his. I didn't think – didn't need to.

"Yes."

**[Raiha]**

!!!!!

**[Kirisawa Fuuko]**

!!!!!

His arm was around my waist, his hair tickling at my shoulder. His breath was hot in my ear. His eyelashes brushed against the side of my face. His lips were on my forehead. 

A tingle ran down my spine into the goosebumps on my arms.

His hand rubbed along my back. I could feel the warmth of his body even beneath the thick fabric of his jacket. He kissed softly my eyebrow, then the bridge of my nose, now down to the tip of my nose. 

My breath rushed through my head, the only sound I could feel.

And then we kissed, deep and long. His mouth was hot, wet, tender. I sighed into him, as he licked my upper lip. 

I stopped thinking, I couldn't think. I was feeling, pure feeling. My blood rushed through my veins, my fingers fell through his hair. 

I pulled away, short of breath. 

"Fuuko…" he whispered, and he was there again, breathing me, and it was as if we would never stop. 

His hand was soft against the skin of my back. I made a sound, and pushed his fingers away, but still we kissed. 

It was magic. It was passion. It was electric. We were flying past the stars, diving into the ocean depths, scaling the great mountains. We were forever and always, spinning into timelessness. Despite the snow, there was heat.

When we broke away again, I glanced at my watch. Half past three in the morning! Yet I didn't care. With a gasp, he covered my mouth with his, arching my head backwards. 

Through the downy winter clothes I could feel his body, hard and muscular and lean from years of training. His neck ran into his shoulders that ran into his chest, a sea of muscle within which a heart was beating – for me. His hair came loose and fell around his face and mine like a curtain as we kissed in the empty snow. But more than that loose silkiness, it was strength that surrounded me. It was a strong body, a strong mind, a strong heart. A heart. 

"Anata," I gently pushed his head away, watching as his eyes slowly opened. "You are drunk."

He blinked. "And you are not."

"No, that wasn't what I meant. I – "

"That was my meaning. Is this the furthest you are willing to go?" He licked his lip, and I blushed at the memory of that tongue nuzzling at mine. "Imagine if you were drunk…"

Suddenly I felt cold. 

"I… I think I had better be getting home. Please."

"Oh," he stared at me, then shrugged. "Okay. Fine then. As you wish." 

We drove back in silence, his eyes veiled and faraway. As the car lurched to a stop outside my house, he turned to me, as if to say something, but shook his head and looked away. I shivered, awkwardly, searching for something to say. 

"I love you," I tried, but it didn't sound right somehow.

He nodded. "I love you too," he said, and it seemed to me as if the words had been forced out. 

As I walked into my house, he rolled down the window, calling after me. I turned.

**[Kurei]        **

No. Never. I wouldn't allow it.

Normally I wouldn't care, and Raiha would be free to date whoever he wanted, be it some nameless girl, be it Yanagi, be it Recca, even, if he went that way. I didn't care. 

This one was different, though. This time it piqued my interest. 

There was that thing about the Raijin and the Fuujin. I have never held with the idea of destiny and the such, but I knew there would be chemistry between the two, no matter which individuals wielded them. Much less Raiha and Fuuko. It needn't be love, it could come in the form of aggression, but, to put it simply, when the two crossed, sparks would fly. 

What really made me put my foot down, though, was the way Raiha looked when he came back; really pleased with himself. He had that silly happy face I remembered seeing on her, so long ago. It took quite a chunk of my self-control to stop myself from asking him whether, this time, he was serious. 

I knew what he would have said.

He would have said that he wanted her. 

More than he wanted me?

No. I wouldn't allow it.

No.

**[Kirisawa Fuuko]**

I went home but, of course, couldn't fall asleep. I sat up in bed as the dawn came, thinking of his smouldering eyes and his wet lips. And what he had said to me before he had driven away. 

"I mean it. I love you."

I snuggled into my arms, contented. 

"I mean it. I love you." 

_My first boyfriend! I felt like the heroine in a romance novel. Someone loved me! Forget Mikagami and his coldness, here was someone who wanted me. Raiha loved me. He loved me. And he meant it. The happiness welled up in me, and I felt like I would burst from the loveliness of it all._


	4. chapter four

Chapter Four

"Hey."

"Hey."

"What's up?"

"The sky, ha ha." I cringed even as I said it; it was a stupid joke.

"Ha ha. What are you doing today?"

"I was just going out when you called, actually. But –  "

"Oh, in that case, don't let me detain you."

"Oh. Er. Well – "

"Yup. Bye then."

What was wrong with me? All of a sudden I felt so dreadfully mundane. The person whose arms I could still feel around me sounded so distant. Why? 

I remembered what he had said. "I mean it. I love you." Oh yes, there was that. He did love me. At least there was that I could cling on to. It was a comforting thought.

I wasn't looking for a serious relationship; all I wanted was physical comfort. Even then, what we had done was the furthest I was prepared to go with any guy, and I was scared – but it felt good. I wanted him, so, so much. 

I thought of Recca and Yanagi. How often I had envied them – who hadn't – for their sweetly honest, open relationship. Like Yanagi, I too had a boyfriend, but we were different. Our relationship was darker, more mature, more sensuous. I knew we wouldn't last, but I was content to go along with the moment and let the future worry about itself. 

I doubted we had much of a future. I realised there was so much I did not know about him. Where did he come from, why did he fight? What layers lay beneath that insincere effable smile of him? What did he hide, when he joked and laughed? How did Kurei come to command him? What had made him into that person I knew? 

And I supposed it did not matter. All that mattered was him, and us. 

I shifted in my seat, trying to concentrate on my book. Every now and then I glanced at the clock. I sighed restlessly, realising I wasn't paying attention to what I was reading, and gave up. 

It was past nine, nine thirty, ten. Why hadn't he called yet? Didn't he want to talk to me? I really wanted to talk to him, to just hear his voice and take comfort from it. Perhaps I could… I picked out a number on the caller-ID.

"Hello, Raiha please?"

"Fuuko! What the – Are you crazy? What's wrong with you? Do you want me to get in trouble with Kurei? You shouldn't have called me, especially not this number. Do you know what would happen if he knew you called?"

"I'm sorry. I didn't know… I'm really sorry, honest I am."

"Forget it," he paused, "listen, Fuuko, I've been thinking, and, well, I don't believe it's a good idea for the two of us to be together." 

There was a long silence. I could hear him breathing slowly, absently as the coldness of his voice echoed in my head.

"Sorry?" 

"I said, I don't believe it's a good idea for the two of us to be together."

I was stunned. "But – but, the other night – "

He sighed irritatedly. "Don't you get it? I wanted something from you that you wouldn't give. I was just using you, Fuuko. It looks like I made a poor choice, though, because you couldn't satisfy me, and anyway you're just a little girl. I was just playing, do you understand? I never loved you. I have no feelings for you, and you've been wasting your time with me all along.

Good night, Fuuko."

I almost threw up.

**[Kurei]**

Good. 

**[Kirisawa Fuuko]**

It had taken all of my self-control not to scream at Raiha. I didn't understand why he had done such a thing. 

"You've been wasting your time with me all along." That was the cruellest thing he could have said, and perhaps why he did. I couldn't accept it as the truth – I just couldn't. 

It was as if the sky, hanging so heavily over the whited ground, had fallen. I could not believe it. I just could not believe it. 

There had been passion in his embrace that night. Had it all come from lust? I wouldn't believe that. There was no way… right?

Perhaps he was just upset I had called him. After all he had looked so sincere that night when he told me he meant it; he loved me. He loved me. He could only have been telling the truth. I felt so used, and so dirty, but that gave me hope – really deep down he loved me. Right?

It was all an elaborate scheme. He wanted to test my feelings for him. Or perhaps Kurei was involved in some way that prevented him from loving me. Right?

Right?

**[Hanabishi Recca]**

"Look here, Hanabishi. I'm serious. It isn't right for Fuuko to be going around with an Uruha, even if he is Raiha. He looks harmless, but – and you should know this by now – he isn't."

I scratched my chin absently. "Don't you worry, Mikagami. She'll be fine. We're watching out for her, aren't we? Besides, Raiha doesn't have any motive to hurt her."

He gave me an incredulous look. "He doesn't need one."

"But they're just friends, anyway, right? They aren't going out or anything, after all," Yanagi said.

"I hope you're right," Mikagami conceded very reluctantly, "but I still don't think she should be doing this."

"There's no need for you to be so protective of her, Mikagami. She is the master of the Fuujin after all, you know. Leave her alone and let her do as she wishes." I was feeling irritated. He had no right to be telling her how to live her life and what friends she should be making. 

She would be alright, and nothing would happen to her. 

**[Kirisawa Fuuko]**

One week! One week ago I had a boyfriend who loved me. One week ago at this time I was melting into his arms. What a difference one week makes!

I could still feel his lips on mine, and the arc of his forehead beneath my fingers. We had been lovers, and I was safe and whole within his embrace. "I mean it. I love you." Now it's "I have no feelings for you," I thought bitterly. 

I want to cry. But I can't. I feel so empty inside. There's pain, and despair, but my brain had been dulled. I can't think. 

I want him so much. So, so much. I wish I could talk to someone, and maybe I will feel better, but I can't. The rest of them, they don't know what happened. They think Raiha and I were only friends – are still friends. How can I tell them what happened? I'm such a fool. 

Part of me doesn't care any more. I'm ready to put it all behind me. But sometimes I feel the ghost of his touch, and the taste of his lips. The curve of his forehead beneath my fingertips. And then I want more. In a way I wish it had never happened. Would it have been better that way? At least then he would still be calling, and I wouldn't be feeling this raw heartache. But then I wouldn't have the memories I do now. I wouldn't be able to treasure those fleeting moments of passion.

Is it worth it, though? I am still hoping, waiting, for him to tell me it was all a lie, that he really loves me. I trusted him. He didn't seem the heartless type. 

I need to forget him. 

**[Sakoshita Yanagi]**

Fuuko had been absent for a couple of days. We tried to call and find out whether she was okay, but her phone went unanswered. We (I suspect it was mostly me, actually) were beginning to worry, but she returned to school on Wednesday, and seemed none the worse for whatever illness it was she had suffered.

The rest must have done her some good, for she was livelier and happier than she had been for days. 

**[Mikagami Tokiya]**

I know when someone is lying. I know when someone is putting up a false front. I know when a smile is forced. There is nobody so talented I cannot read him. Or her.

I could tell Fuuko was fighting with something deep inside of her. Her grief had been so poorly hidden I was mildly surprised the others didn't notice it. Then again, they were all just monkeys. I could also tell that it had something to do with Raiha. 

I considered approaching her with an offer of help and a listening ear, but decided against it. For one, her problems, whatever they were, were trivial enough that she didn't need me. She was in no danger, either from Raiha, or herself. That much I could tell. Also, her pride would cause her to regret unloading on me, and there was no point causing any such embarrassment. 

Besides, I didn't care. It just wouldn't be me.

**[Kirisawa Fuuko]**

I am getting over him. I don't ever want to forget him, though. I want to remember the passion and the heady exhilaration. I hope time will erase the heartache and the bitterness, and all that remains will be the lovely memories. 

For now though, it still hurts. It's all I can do to be upbeat for the others in school, and when I get home, I feel like collapsing.

It hurts so much! It's not just in my head, this pain… I feel it now, in my stomach, twisting my gut. 

Why, Raiha? Why did you do this to me? All I wanted was for us to love each other. Was that too much to ask? I admit it – I love you. But you make me so upset. You lied to me. You played with me. Do you know how awful I feel now? I'm so angry with myself. How did I end up this way? This frustration, agitation, rage – I can't take it..  

I remembered the story I had read, the one with the ice skater who cut herself. Instead of being sickened, however, this time I started to wonder why she had done that. Did it really make her feel better? 

Hardly conscious of what I was doing, I walked over to my desk and picked up a penknife. For a second I saw the blade gleaming dully, and then I drew it, slowly, intently, across my wrist. 

I let out my breath. Oddly enough, it didn't hurt – there was some sensation, but it wasn't painful. I felt my skin being pulled tight, and a sharpness slicing through the nerves. For a moment there was nothing, then blood welled up in a thin strip of redness, a thread snaking jaggedly across my sight.

This is for you, Raiha. See what you make me do. See how you have hurt me. 

Not realising I was clenching my teeth, I cut along the same line.

I could have given you so much. 

The feeling of the blade pressed against my wrist was not unpleasant; it was satisfying and somehow reassuring. 

I could have loved you so much.

I dug the knife deeper into the wound. Digging out all the pain.

But you didn't want it. 

Blood started to roll in big, lazy drops down my arm, streaking wide swaths of crimson along my skin. 

It's warm, this…

Suddenly shaking, I dropped the knife, letting it clatter faintly onto the blood-splattered floor. I clutched my wrist, watching as the blood oozed out and slowly congealed. 

I felt so detached, like I was watching a movie from far, far away. I stared, entranced. Would I keep bleeding, bleeding, until there was nothing left in me? No – the flow of blood was slowing. Now it stopped. 

I began to think lucidly, methodically. I wiped the floor with a bunch of tissues, and washed my arm carefully, applying a dressing over the wound. I wiped the knife blade free of dried blood, and stowed it away. 

When everything was cleaned, I flopped onto my bed, feeling much better. There was no pain from the cut beneath the bandage, and mentally I was at ease. I felt as if I had just had a good, long cry, and managed to thrash out all my problems. I was calm and tranquil and quiet. 

I rolled over and went to sleep.

They say the best way to get over someone is to start loving another person. That filling your heart with a yearning is the fastest way to remove another ache. 

I pondered upon this as I walked to school the next morning, pulling a sweater over my shirt to hide the dressing on my wrist. It was morning, but the day felt old, and tired, like the dullness of my self-inflicted wound. 

"Fuuko," a gentle hand rested on my shoulder. 

"Mikagami," I acknowledged him listlessly. They say the best way to get over someone is to start loving another person.

We walked in silence. 

"Something's wrong, isn't it, Fuuko? You want to talk about it?" 

"You know I care about you, Fuuko."

"I wish I could do something."

"I just want to help you."

"I love you."

In a movie, the hero would know I wanted him. He would come to my rescue, and give me a shoulder to cry on. He would be strong for me when I couldn't be strong, and make me forget all my pain. He would be perceptive, and sensitive, and understanding. And ultimately, he would fall for me and sweep me off my feet and we would fade together into the brightness of the rolling credits.

But this was reality. The world was colder, drearier and not half as romantic, and wouldn't come to a convenient closure in two (and a half, at most) hours. And Mikagami just wasn't like that. He wouldn't care.

He wouldn't care. 

Still, I wanted him to say something, anything, that would make me believe in love again. Anything at all to show that he was a friend. Tell me, my heart screamed silently at him. Tell me I'm worth something. Show me you're different. Give me someone to trust in.

Finally I broke the silence. "Don't you normally walk to school with Recca and the others?"

He shook his head. "Only if you do." 

"Me?" My insides jumped, hopefully. What was I supposed to think at that? That I meant so much to him and that he valued being with me?

"It's impolite to be the only one not walking with them. Since you don't go to school with them now, I have an excuse not to as well."

"Oh."

"Besides, I don't like company."

Was this a hint? That he found my presence an irritation? 

"Oh."

_By now we had reached the school gates, and he slipped away into the throng, saving me the need to think up a more intelligent reply.  _


	5. chapter five

Chapter Five

The past few weeks had seen a strange mix of feelings. From joy, to euphoria, to a heady sort of lust. Then to shock, horror, to disappointment, to anger, to sadness, to desperation. Now, I was confused.

He was different now. During and slightly after the tournament, he had opened up and made an effort to be friendly. When the blow of Kai's revelation came, he found he had a group of friends to fall back on for support, and, for once in his life, allowed himself to accept it. But time passed, and he seemed to be reverting back to what he had been. He wouldn't let anyone near him, erecting invisible barriers around his soul. Nobody knew what was going on with him. Nobody could. Much less me.

I liked him. I really did. That made me more responsive to his every word and gesture. The little exchange we had had this morning had shaken me. I had picked hints out of nowhere, and deduced connotations, seeing nuances, where there were none. I had hung onto his every move. 

I felt like such an idiot, falling for all the wrong guys: Raiha, who is after all an assassin, and Mikagami, who doesn't give a damn about anyone, not even himself, and certainly not me. There was something seriously wrong with me. (Maybe it was because they were both swordsmen, slender, looked like girls, and had long beautiful hair.)

Yet I couldn't deny it. I wanted him. I had never been attracted to anything the way I was to him. 

What did I want him for, though? I couldn't answer that. To be my boyfriend? That seemed so wrong. He was more than all that; he was above the petty concerns of teenage relationships. What, then? It was confusing, and I was one confused girl.

Well, at any rate, I wanted him. That was clear. 

Everything was finally, unequivocally plain to me. 

Ultimately, it didn't matter that I liked him. It didn't matter what my heart wanted. It didn't matter; nothing mattered. All I needed to do right now was study. That was what was important, education. Getting into a good university. Not some silly teenage crush. I didn't have time for that sort of nonsense.

Man! That was depressing. To admit life was nothing more than the mundane and to reject the dreams of romance, beauty and exhilaration every teenager desires. I felt like I was sacrificing everything that would make me happy in order to devote myself to something so boring, so tedious that previously I had tried my best to avoid as much of it as possible. All my world had suddenly been reduced to the pile of books I was holding in my arms. 

Then again, if Mikagami could do it, so could I. He didn't want to, but he knew his sister wanted only the best for him, and would therefore work to give himself the best.

I should not – need not – love him, but I did, from afar. I could not touch him, but I would be silently rooting for him from behind. His sister wasn't the only one who wanted the best for him. And maybe, just maybe, if I stopped myself from feeling, I would become more like him.

**[Mikagami Tokiya]**

I made a big, big mistake, when I thought Fuuko would be able to take care of herself, because she was obviously breaking apart. When I approached her in the morning I almost mentioned it, but something stopped me. Something – I know not what.

Never mind. It wasn't any of my business anyway, and nothing good would come out of meddling in it.

**[Kirisawa Fuuko]**

I tried, I really did. I stopped myself from smiling at my teacher's jokes. I spoke to no one, as far as that was possible. I did all my homework, I forced myself to study. I tried to retreat into myself. I tried to make myself believe I needed nobody's company but my own.

That was not the problem. 

It was just that – why was it? – I felt so tired all the time, a tiredness that was not merely physical, it went deep into the bone, into the soul. I was so exhausted. As before the whole Raiha thing happened, I was persistently fatigued, empty, and disinterested in everything. 

My life, my whole world, seemed so dreadfully farcical. Maybe that was part of the reason why I was attracted to people like Raiha, and Mikagami. They represented an existence that had worth. Their life had meaning, though perhaps not very self-fulfilling meaning. I mean, look at Mikagami. He was one miserable guy. But I envied his life nonetheless, because it was different. He had purpose, and made sacrifices, and faced death with resolution. Me, my purpose was to study. The only sacrifices I made were in, for example, TV time. And the only death I faced nowadays was the sort that resulted from not doing my homework. He was the sort of person heroic stories were written about, while I was the sort of person who studied those stories in Literature class while trying to stay awake. 

On the surface we could be the same. Students, not much respect for authority, just your typical angst-ridden teenager. That was true, for me. That was my identity. But for Mikagami, it was just a veneer that hid his true intent. A situation of convenience, a day job. He was a student, as was I, but not because he had no other choice. 

Suddenly I felt so tired. So what? So what if his life was filled with tormented Byronic romance, and mine with algebraic equations? So what? It didn't matter. Maybe to someone who had more energy to think these things through it would, but it didn't matter to me, not anymore.

It didn't matter. I didn't care. I was just too tired to bother. 

**[Sakoshita Yanagi]**

"Fuuko," I said softly, "you want to get a soda? I'll treat."

She stared dully at me, a look that was – I can't describe it – desolate, weary, pathetic. Her eyes were lost, blank. 

"You don't have to pay for me," she seemed to shake herself, agreeing so reluctantly you would think it required some sort of great effort to sit in a diner and talk.

"Why are you doing this, Yanagi? Why are you taking me out?"

"Why not?" I slid into the seat opposite hers, reaching for the menu. "We're friends, aren't we?"

A pause.

"Perhaps because it says in your organiser under the 'To Do' list, 'Monday: Have a drink with Fuuko and Be Nice to her, the poor sod' or something like that?" She blinked once, bitterly.  

"How could you ever think that? I asked you out because I wanted to spend time with you! Come on!" I was genuinely hurt at her hostility.

She shrugged, not looking straight at me. "You've got to be joking. Why should you want to spend time with me? I'm not very fun to be with, and I keep grumbling, plus I just pissed you off, didn't I?"

I realised I had been getting heated up. "I'm sorry," I said, keeping my voice even, "But that isn't true."

She scoffed. "Please. You don't have to lie to me. This – this is a chore, isn't it? You're doing this for me. Out of the kindness of your own heart. Not because you gain any pleasure from doing so. You're just trying to be, be, nice, or sweet, or something, as usual. You know what, Yanagi? I don't need your pity. Not yours or anyone else's." 

She stood up, tossing a handful of coins onto the table for the drink, and walked off. 

"I'm not worth it, anyhow," I heard her whisper under her breath. 

I could only stare impotently at her disappearing back.

**[Kirisawa Fuuko]**

I hate myself. It's one thing to be rude to myself, but why was I so mean to Yanagi? She was just being friendly. Why? Why can't I be civilized for once? What's wrong with me?

I hate myself so much. I'm so useless. Good for nothing. Worthless. 

But maybe it was all for the best. The more I alienate everyone else, the less they'll care about me. That's good. Because I'm not worth anyone's bother. It's just not right, that people – nice people, like Yanagi – should worry about some messed-up loser like me. I can't think why anyone should be concerned about me. I'm hopeless anyway. I'm like this, and nothing can change me. I'm pessimistic, cynical, sarcastic. Who would like a person like me? *I* sure don't. 

I started to cry, once I was in the privacy of my room. Despite what I truly believed, I still felt so awfully guilty for being rude to Yanagi and hurting her feelings. And yet it was nothing more than typical of me. I knew, I just knew, that I was an awful person. I cried, great, choking sobs. The walls started to swim in grey tears. I hiccupped. This grief was so great, it was physical, almost. I clutched my abdomen as if I were trying to tear away the flesh over my stomach. 

Crying like this felt good, in a perverse way. It made everything feel better. It made me feel cleaner, and anyway I was so tired after that I had no energy to think. It was like – it was like – 

It was like cutting myself. 

**[Hanabishi Recca]**

Fuuko came up to us just as we were finishing lunch. "I'm sorry, Yanagi," she said as she sat down.

My princess looked a bit surprised. "For what?"

"I was kind of mean to you yesterday, and I'm sorry."

"Oh," she nodded once, "that's okay, Fuuko. You were just having a bad day, that's all. I understand. It's alright." 

No. It wasn't alright. I could see that, Yanagi could see that, Domon could see that, even that blockhead Mikagami could see that. Fuuko wasn't alright. We all knew that, and Fuuko knew we knew. 

But she refused to let us do anything to help her. 

We were her closest friends, dammit! Who did she turn to, if not us? How was it possible that she preferred to go through whatever problems she faced without confiding in a friend? It just was not possible. 

All we could do was be as friendly as we could, and try to let her know, deep in her heart, that all of us cared, and that when she needed us, we would be there.

**[Ishijima Domon]**

Food is the way to a man's – or woman's – heart, so we cooked up a nice bento box for her, thinking it would be a nice surprise. Mikagami spoke to her as she left the classroom for lunch, and somehow – we were never quite sure how he did it – got her to join us at our table. 

"We made this for you," Yanagi looked so pleased.

Fuuko blinked. She looked at Mikagami, then at the rest of us. 

"Thanks, everyone, but you shouldn't have. I'm not really hungry today. Sorry." She jumped up abruptly and practically ran out. 

_Even Mikagami's mouth was open in surprise._


	6. part third - spring - chapter six

Part Third – Spring – Chapter Six

**[Kirisawa Fuuko]**

I don't know when it started, but that was the moment I would look to, much later, and identify as the first time I realized it was there. Or at least that was where it began. 

I stared at myself in the mirror, the full-length mirror over my cupboard door. I stared, I turned, I stared. I jabbed at the flesh over my stomach, and my thighs, making them wobble. I held out my right arm and poked the underneath; the pale skin jiggled.

I felt like throwing up, I really did. Where had the slim, lithe Fuuko I thought I was gone to? I placed my face against the glass and stared into my reflection until I couldn't recognise the person I saw.

I started to cry.

**[Mikagami Tokiya]**

I sat down beside her, looking at her looking into sky with faraway eyes. Overhead, the clouds rolled across the grey; thunder rumbled like an empty stomach.

I was silent.

We sat there, together, but each totally and completely alone, then she sighed softly, got up, and walked off.

**[Kirisawa Fuuko]**

It was not easy for me to leave without saying a word. It was one of those incredibly symbolic acts that you only ever see in books and movies, and it should speak volumes (but it doesn't, in real life). It should have had him running after me and grabbing me in his arms. The world would spin away and beautiful music would play. And I would feel fragile in his strong hands, but safe. 

But he didn't run after me. Of course not. And even if he had, I wouldn't have felt fragile in his hands, because I wasn't thin enough that my bones were rattling in my skin. I was fat. It should be no wonder, then, that my life was as mundane and meaningless as it was – I was not beautiful, so why should my existence be? 

I was not beautiful like he was. He was so in control of himself. He was everything I could never be, because he was so in control. Not like me. I was weak, self-indulgent, irritating. I could never bear suffering like he does. Perhaps that is because he is beautiful, and only the beautiful suffer, like he does; silently, strongly.

Perhaps it is that which makes the beautiful, more beautiful.

**[Hanabishi Recca]**

Spring break! 

The whole bunch of us, even Mikagami and Fuuko, were going to stay at the Hokage place up in the mountains. I was totally psyched for a week of fun. 

Fuuko, Domon and I went up the weekend before armed with brooms, soap, and other cleaning paraphernalia to tidy up the place; nobody had been there since Mom came down to live with us. The others were to shop for food and kerosene and things like that. 

"Domon! Can you help me with this thing?" I called as I stepped into the room. "Hey, Domooooo-argh!" The world suddenly turned sideways as I fell over. Fuuko giggled. "Careful, mister, the floor is slippery."

I groaned, trying not to move. "You could have told me that earlier." 

They came over, bending over me. "You okay?" Domon asked.

"Yeah, I think so," I grimaced, "just give me a moment to get up."

"Hey." She put a hand on my shoulder. "Don't be in such a hurry. Wait a bit, or you may injure yourself further. Domon, you go see to that thing Recca was doing, and I'll stay with him for now."

Domon acquiesced, heading off. Fuuko mopped up the soapy water around me and flopped down.

"How do you feel?" She grinned. 

I smiled back. "I'll be fine. You really don't have to worry about me." 

"It's good to take a break anyway. You don't know what a slave driver Domon can be. Whew!" She wiped her brow, leaving a trail of soapsuds across her forehead. "I'm tired."

I contemplated her profile as she closed her eyes. I hadn't heard her laugh that way – honestly, openly, unreservedly – for a long time. She used to, constantly, but not anymore. Nowadays her laughter was short, cynical, dry. Mocking. I missed the sort of cheerful banter we used to share, because exchanges like the one we just had were rare, and short.

She opened an eye. "What? Why are you looking at me like that?"

"No…" I shook my head, "Fuuko…"

"Hm?" She closed her eyes again and leaned back onto her elbows. "What is it?"

"I… No. Nothing." I was tempted to tell her it was nice to talk to her like that, but I knew it would only irk her and the rapport we shared would be lost.

"You sure you're okay, Recca? Did you hit your head or something? You're acting all weird." 

"No, I didn't. I'm fine. It's just that…" I coughed. "You've got lather all over your face."

She squealed, the way only girls know how to, wiping her palm across her nose. "Silly Recca-!" She scooped soap up from the floor and rubbed it into my hair, chortling.

"That's it, missy, you're dead!" I roared. Laughing, we play-wrestled with each other, tumbling around the room. As we used to, when we were kids.

A small cough came from the doorway. We both looked up sheepishly, Domon was standing there with a mop in his fist. He raised an eyebrow.

"How's your back, Recca? Still hurting?" He grinned. Fuuko was sitting astride of me with a proximity that would have been too intimate were we not such good friends. 

I threw a glance back at her. We both burst out laughing. "Yes, Domon, my back is fine." 

From far away, I heard a faint beeping. "Oh! Excuse me, that's my phone." I hurried from the room to retrieve my cellphone from my backpack. It was Yanagi.

It wasn't anything important, she had just called to talk a bit while she waited for a bus. The conversation was short, pointless, sweet. We had had the same conversation many times; the words were different – or maybe they were the same, it doesn't matter – but the meaning behind them was always the unchanged. I love you, I want to be near you, I need you. It was a routine we had slipped into; a routine that would have been so alien to me a year ago. Idly I wondered if, to my friends who had known me before her, I was as different as my life was now, as compared to then. But it didn't matter. I was the same person deep down. 

Her voice crackled as the connection faltered. " – later. Love you!" was all I heard before it was lost. I smiled unconsciously. It was nice to hear her voice, especially when she said things like that. 

Fuuko was looking at me intensely, and I met her gaze. She shook her head slightly, and stared at the floor as she turned away. "Nice to be in love, isn't it?" was all she said.

**[Kirisawa Fuuko]**

It was so poignantly painful to watch Recca. A year ago, we had been the same. There was nothing to worry us, and all we did was have fun together in the same way. It was always him, me, Domon. It was always us. Always just us.

Now it was so much more complicated. There was Mikagami and Yanagi, and Koganei and Ganko as well. It was never the three of us any more. For one, Recca was not just Recca, he had become Recca-and-Yanagi. 

Not that I minded, I loved these people. It was just – different. There was something behind our friendship. We were not the three misfits who had banded together, a bit out of necessity, as we were before. We hardly ever spoke about it, but the feeling was always there: the camaraderie of facing death together. All the bonding we had done, isolated and scared in a hotel in the forest. We were all more than just friends. 

But – but it is never that simple. Sometimes I longed for the time when Recca was just Recca. When I looked back on it, it seemed like a time of innocence, and oblivion. We were just three kids. We didn't know anything about the world, least of all that Recca was a centuries-old ninja leader. We didn't know, and we didn't care. Maybe it was better like that.

I didn't resent Yanagi for taking that friendship away from us. But I was jealous of the love she and Recca shared. They weren't like the there-a-minute-gone-the-next high school couples who only thought had love when really they didn't. But Recca and Yanagi – they were different. They were like the intense lovers of old, the sort that threw themselves, entwined within each other, into swollen rivers. Their love – it was like a fairy tale. Princess and knight. Devotion. Sacrifice. Tenderness. Beauty. Innocence.

I was so jealous. Compared to them, what was I? All I had ever had was a cold-blooded killer who only wanted my body. At that time, I had exulted in the maturity of our relationship, because I was too blind to see it for what it really was – a mockery of love. 

If only…! If only I would, one day, experience a love like Recca and Yanagi's. 

What a joke. Who would love me that way? I was not like either of them. I was not so innocent as they were. I was too cynical to ever be able to appreciate a man who loved me like that. 

On the other hand, perhaps I was expecting too much. Maybe it was not the high school relationships that were unrealistic – perhaps they were the cold, hard truth. That love is nothing more than hormones. That my marriage would be one of convenience and not romance. I need not love my husband. And that would be okay. Because love would just have been a lie, a fragment of adolescence when everything was supposed to be wonderful, when it actually isn't. 

Maybe, love was not meant for people like me. 

The evening was warm, and very pleasant, one of the perks of living in the south – up in Hokkaido it was still snowing. We were sitting on the veranda, happily tired with the exertions of travelling up into the mountains. Our things were all put away in the rooms, and we were all full of tired exhilaration. Over to the east the sea faintly glittered in the rays of the setting sun.

A lovely chicken aroma wafted over; Koganei and Yanagi were at it in the kitchen. None of us had known Koganei could cook, but apparently it was one of the many skills he had learnt as an Uruha. 

I noticed the people on the terrace slowly drifting indoors. First Domon disappeared, then Recca. Trust them to head towards any available source of food. 

Finally it was just Mikagami and I left outside. He was, not surprisingly, studying. It was the only thing we ever saw him doing nowadays. He was so hardworking, it was a wonder his brains hadn't fallen out yet. If I studied as hard as he did, I would be confident of acing the university entrance exams we would all take at the end of high school. 

I stared at his profile and loved it. His brow was lightly furrowed as he scratched out the working to a problem in his textbook. I could not understand why that should make my heart beat faster. 

Perhaps, because he was so good at everything he behaved like a machine, with all his actions merely routine gestures, and for once I could see evidence of a person beneath the shell, a person who had to think and contemplate like normal people. Perhaps, because he was so far above us regular high-schoolers that it seemed a waste for him to conform himself to our level. Perhaps, because it was him.

Whatever it was, I had to say something. 

"You're so smart, surely you don't have to study so much?"

He looked up mildly, pushing his spectacles at the bridge of his nose. "But I like it."

"You have to be kidding."

"No, I am serious. It's like meditating. It focuses the mind. And it fills me with things that have nothing to do with my life."

"Huh?"

"For the time when I am studying, I am taken away from everything else that is my world. I don't think about all the – I don't think about unrelated things. It's like drugs, I suppose, or alcohol – for a moment you cease to exist and you forget."

He looked away. "Sorry. That was a bit too personal wasn't it? I shouldn't have told you that."

"No," I said gently, "don't feel that way. It's really nice that I now understand a bit more about you. We're friends, aren't we? There should be no secrets between friends. Thanks for telling me all this, Mikagami." It was so rare, the instances when he opened up even that little bit and revealed a fragment of the enigma that he was.

He shot me a sharp look, and was about to say something, but we were interrupted by Koganei. "Come on, lovebirds, time to eat!"

I blushed. If only it was true, that we were lovebirds.

If only.

**[Mikagami Tokiya]**

I watched her as she sat, smiled, talked. Her emotions were so open and unguarded, and were plastered all over her features, free for all to read. I couldn't ever imagine myself being that way. I watched her light up when I let her peek into my mind. It was odd, and mildly flattering, to see how she was gratified by something as simple as telling her why I spent so much time studying. She was so surprised she couldn't even respond properly, she gave me some touchy-feely rubbish that sounded nice but meant nothing. It was kind of sweet. Yet something inside told me she wasn't as simple as all that, and there was a lot she wasn't revealing. 

I watched her as she bit her lip over the food Koganei placed before her. She picked up the chopsticks and posed them over the steaming pile of vegetables. She was hesitant, undecided, unsure. Contemplating some things, weighing others, fighting herself.

I watched her cut each piece of chicken into pieces, and then into smaller pieces, and then even smaller ones. She ate in small, dainty nibbles, eyes cast down, shut away.

I watched her as she pushed the half-full plate away as Domon scraped the last few grains of rice off his. I watched her hungry eyes linger wistfully on it, and her despair as Recca cleared the plates.

And then, late at night, I watched her stare for the longest time at the marshmallows everyone else was roasting over the fire. I watched her mouth water, then go dry, then start to consume her. I watched her reach out for the sweet stuff and eat it, slowly at first, then faster, and faster.

The whole time, she looked as if she were going to cry. 

**[Kirisawa Fuuko]**

I was good, at first. I ate slowly, picking at my food as much as I could stand. I left a lot uneaten. 

But as I saw everyone else eat the marshmallows and desserts so happily, I started to salivate. I was very conscious of a desire to try just one – just one – and I tried to ignore it. I tried. But in the end the adrenaline rushing through my heart proved too much for me, and I took a piece. My stomach was still unfilled, and all of a sudden it seemed impossible that I should be able to last the entire night without anything else going into it. 

And then I took another. The last one, I promised myself. 

And then I took another. The last one, I promised myself again.

And then I took another. The last one, I promised myself yet again.

I couldn't stop. And then, since I couldn't stop, I didn't care. I just ate, and ate, after all, I'd already taken so many, what difference did it make taking just one more? Or two more? Soon I stopped feeling good about eating less of dinner. Oh, what the heck, why not just eat, right? I could diet, tomorrow. So I ate. As much as I wanted.

And the whole time, I felt like I was going to cry.

**[Mikagami Tokiya]**

She did not have an eating disorder. Yet. It was different, it was just disordered eating. But it was bad enough. 

It was very unpleasant, because I was the only person who had noticed anything. Anyone else would have sat her down and talked to her. Somebody with less atypical social and moral values than mine, with what is conventionally taken to construe a conscience, would have done something about it. That would have been the end of the matter, because I wouldn't have had to worry about it.

It was unpleasant, because it made me think about myself. Was I really that uncaring and unconcerned? If so, I had no obligations to help Fuuko, because by nature I was apathetic to the pain of others. But I remembered when I rescued Koganei from Mokuren's tree. I needn't have done that. I could have just let him die. I had reasoned that the life of one person has more value than the pain of another, so I suffered what I did to save him. But in this case, was Fuuko's life in danger? No. I didn't think so.

Then again, this coldness that pervaded my personality had begun as a put-on affectation during my tutelage as a student of the Ensui. If that was so, I had a responsibility to my – hidden-away – childhood conscience to do something, because if not, I would in effect render myself inhumane and as cruel as someone like Mikoto, who killed for fun. On the other hand, a persona originally adopted, as opposed to a naturally-developed one, can also, after a long enough time, integrate itself into the wearer's identity, and it becomes as entrenched in him as the habits learnt from childhood. It was as if I had challenged myself to become someone, and unconsciously incorporated the challenge into myself. 

I didn't like it, this psychological grappling with myself. I didn't need it. I didn't want it. I didn't care about her – or was it just that I didn't want to care? That was what made the difference. If it was the latter, I had an obligation to step out of my comfort zone and do something.

Should I?

Finally, I decided to wait and see what would develop. Right now she was not seriously harming herself, and there was no real need to intervene in her life, an action that would be, I suspected, seriously unwanted by both her and myself. Although I felt an innate compulsion to reach out to her, I felt it was not necessary. Perhaps if the situation worsened. 

I turned away from the darkness of her profile as she leaned against the steps staring at the midnight moon, and quietly returned to my room.

** [Kirisawa Fuuko]**

All I wanted to be was beautiful. Was that too much to ask for? I didn't need to be devoted, like Recca, or strong, like Koganei, or determined, like Domon, or driven, like Mikagami. I just wanted to be pure and free, and to float in the wind like a feather. I wanted my intense, complicated life to go away. I wanted to stop hurting for things I could not name. 

I wanted my life to be beautiful. Not just in the physical sense – I wanted it to be beautiful, all over. I couldn't really put my finger on it, and I struggled to identify what I meant, even to myself. I just knew that I wanted to be able to generalize myself into 'beautiful', even though I could not say what, specifically, it meant. 

What was beauty? Courage, triumph, purity, expression, love? Hatred, control, loss, fear, self-destruction? Could it be that my ideals spanned such a spectrum of oxymoronic paradoxes? What then could I really be wanting? I only knew that I yearned for something special, something better than what I was now, and that the only way I could describe that intangible thing was to call it, simply, beautiful. It was a way of taking everything that was complex and indescribable and making it simple. So that I could understand myself.

If only all the confusion in my life would go away. If only everything were simple, and defined. If only everything were perfect. If only I was beautiful.

Sadness, pretty sadness, leaked from in between the clouds, floating in the white mist, flying in the dawn's half-light. Even through my socks, the wooden floorboards were cold in the grey morning. It was quiet; none of the others were awake yet. 

No, tell a lie. He was awake. Of course he would be. He was un-human in so many other respects, it was no surprise that Mikagami was unlike us in this as well. For who else woke before dawn, especially when there was no school to attend? 

He was sitting on a rock in the open space beyond the complex with his back to me, but I saw him shift his shoulders, almost imperceptibly, and I knew he was aware of my presence. But he didn't move otherwise. 

He was cloaked in grey gossamer wisps of the mist, and droplets of dew had coalesced on his hair. He seemed to be a part of the morning, as real and as fragile as the weak blue light, and I thought it was almost as if he would disappear – blow away – when the sun rose. His presence was unearthly, unreal. He didn't belong here, with us, for we were as insipid as the earth itself, while he was part of the air and the spirits. 

I couldn't bring myself to disturb him, or induce him to acknowledge me, it seemed a sacrilege almost. As unobtrusively as I could, I left him, my heart aching with an inexplicable sense of loss and longing. 

"Hello." I turned to see Koganei settling himself down beside me. I nodded to acknowledge him. 

I looked up, seeing a curtain of endless rain, drops of water dripping from the eaves. The day was grey; it was cold and melancholy and full. Everyone was feeling down, and nobody liked to be stuck inside. Recca and the others were playing Monopoly in the hall, and Mikagami had disappeared off to goodness-knew-where. Water! It seemed as if it were everywhere, and the damp smell of soaked grass permeated the whole complex. The mirrors in my room had started sweating, it was that humid. My hair was limp and flaccid. It seemed to have been raining forever, and would rain until the end of time. 

"Awful, isn't it, this weather?"

"Yeah." I was glad of his company, but I wanted my solitude back.

"Sorta makes you wish you were back in bed, under your covers."

"Yeah. Ooh. Don't make me think of that. They're too comfortable."

He laughed. "As comfortable as a hug?"

"Huh?"

He put his arms around me and held tight, "I think a hug is the most comfortable thing in the world! Because it says that someone cares about you."

"Where did that come from?" I wondered aloud as he let me go.

"I dunno. Definitely not Kurei." I glanced at him, his eyes were cast down. "He never touched me except when he was teaching me something or – or when he was mad at me." 

"Oh, Koganei." My heart ached for the things this young mind must have had to endure. 

"But," he grinned at me, "you remember during the tournament? When niichan got me out of Mokuren?" I nodded. "It was the safest I had ever felt, then, resting in his arms. I was so terrified, trapped inside that tree, and I didn't know what was happening. There were… things… stuck inside me, and I felt my strength being drawn out. It was so awful! I was dying. I was becoming part of the awful creature. I was so scared. Then suddenly there was a flash, and something sliced beneath me, and there was Mi-chan, pulling me out into the air."

I held my breath, watching him shiver involuntarily, feeling a bit of the terror he had felt at that time. 

"He looks so fragile, you know? So thin, like he might break. But his arms, they were so strong. And my head was pressed to his heart, I could hear it beating, and that made me feel so comforted. Somehow, he had made me feel like I mattered. Like I was worth something. Though maybe he didn't mean it, for the first time in my life, I knew someone loved me. I can't describe how wonderful it felt. And then I lost consciousness, but even in the depths of that blackness, I felt safer than I ever had been."

He looked up, his large eyes wet. "I would do anything for him. For you guys."

I put my arm around his small shoulders. "Oh, Koganei…"

It was a very touching testimony, but all I could think about right then was the way he described Mikagami. So thin, like he might break.

What I would give, to be held the way Koganei was. What I would not give, to deserve to feel the warmth of that embrace, to finally find in that safety a surety. But I would never deserve that. I was worth nothing, least of all his love. 

I felt so horrible. I hated myself, hated the flesh and the fat all over me, hated my pathetic brain. I hated the way I talked, the way I walked, the way I smiled, the way I thought, the way I looked. There was nothing in me that could possibly be redeemed. 

I hate it! I hate it I hate it I hate it! I screamed silently at my locked door. I hate you! 

There were no words I could put to the anger I felt towards myself.

I hate you, I sobbed, tears coursing down my face. I hate you so much.

I flung open the door to the attached bath, drying my eyes. I hate you. I hate you. I pulled my toothbrush from its holder by the sink. Throwing my head back so that I stared into the ceiling, I stuck the nubbly bristle-free end deep into my throat until I gagged. My eyes watered, making the light fixtures swim. I shoved it in, again and again, and again, until I had to lean over the sink, spitting out saliva. I hate you. 

I did that until small chopped-up pieces of lettuce came up along with the saliva. I hate you. But this will make you better. 

I hung over the sink, breathing hard. It was not enough. The food had come from my throat, not my stomach. It wasn't enough.

I pushed the toothbrush against my throat again, irritating the back of my tongue where it was rough and bumpy. My eyes watered. Kept leaning over and spitting out saliva. Then, food. Thick, lumpy paste, coloured the white and orange and green of lunch. Panting, I washed it away. Again. Do it again. 

I forced myself to throw up, until I couldn't tell whether the tears were from the nausea in my constricting stomach or the pain in my heart. My hand shaking, I put the toothbrush back in the holder. Then I collapsed onto the white tiled floor, crying. 

My throat was raw and sick with the stain of regurgitated food. The hollow of my gullet, irritated red and tender, seemed to grow and filled my neck with a swelling. I could taste the tofu I had eaten; it was sickly-sweet and suggested a sort of decomposition. 

When would this end? Where would this end? I sobbed against the cold light. I wanted so badly to be beautiful, but I wanted just as much for someone to save me. 

I hate you_, I cried brokenly into my hands. _I hate you.


	7. chapter seven

Chapter Seven

**[Ishijima Domon]**

What a drag, to return to school. I had fun, during the holidays, but, as always, life returned to that one reality – school. Where everything was the same and everything was boring. It was an eternity, school was, and it seemed as if it would never end.

**[Kirisawa Fuuko]**

It was well and good to look for diversions, but everything ultimately returned to the one eternal truth – hunger. Holidays, school – there was no difference to me. Time crept by, digging painfully into my body. Days revolved only around hunger, food, hunger, food. 

It was a struggle to get through each day, each hour. I couldn't even live from day to day, I was existing from moment to moment. I couldn't really concentrate, in class – all I could think about was what I would eat later and the hollowness in my stomach, which spread and enveloped my entire being. I was so empty. 

First I had given up breakfast – who ate it, anyway? Then I decided to save on my lunch money, too. So I spent the break in the library, doing work, or sitting on the roof staring at the city. I learnt to treat the hunger as a friend, a bosom companion, who would be with me always. I taught myself that feeling hungry wasn't a good enough reason to eat. I told myself that I was starving so much I wasn't hungry anymore.

After school, I forced myself to go for runs, endless runs. First for twenty minutes – two miles. Then more, and more. Forty minutes. An hour. Sometimes, two; sometimes, even until I developed tunnel vision and my world shrank to a wavering circle of colours. Thinking of that stressed me out. I was so tired, but still I had to run. I was always aching the next day, but I ran anyway. 

I was so tired. So unbelievably tired. When I got home, I wanted so bad to cry, but I couldn't – I didn't have the energy. It was dinnertime, anyway, and it was the only meal of the day I permitted myself to eat. Nothing ever tasted as good as the simple rice and vegetable fare to me – I was ravenous. But I never let myself eat enough. Before I was full I would push my plate away and declare, No more. And then I would take a bath, and throw up what I could. In the mornings, it became almost impossible to force myself to get out of the soft warmth of my bed.

Hunger – it was the only constant in my life. I woke up hungry, went to bed hungry. It was a hunger that seemed to take over my life and consume me. 

Every detail of my life became regimented. I made myself run, everyday. I would only let myself eat one bowl worth of food during dinner. I would only sleep five, at the most, six, hours. I always ate carrots before dinner proper so that when I threw up I knew when to stop (when I saw orange). Yet I never felt like I had enough control. Because sometimes I ran less, sometimes I ate more, sometimes I slept longer, sometimes I didn't throw up enough. And I hated myself for it. It was such an intense feeling that I wanted to disappear, to die. 

I started to lose weight.

**[Sakoshita Yanagi]**

"Come on, Fuuko, won't you join us?" I gently pulled her slender wrist. "We haven't eaten lunch together for so long." 

She smiled faintly at me. "No, thanks, I still have loads of homework to do. Maybe tomorrow."

As she walked off, something inside me made me run and grab her and give her a hug. "Fuuko… Stop doing this to yourself," I begged. My arms were wrapped around her small waist, and the soft yellow glow of my healing power surrounded us. 

She pushed away. "I'm not doing anything," she insisted, staring at me. You cannot heal a wound that is in the mind, her glare challenged. And she was right, I couldn't. 

"Don't you feel like you are missing out on so much when you don't eat? The joy of eating?" I smiled. If anything, I was amazed at her incredible discipline, her immense willpower.

"Well, yeah, but I would rather be thin." She laughed, "That's what diets are for, aren't they?"

"You're not fat, Fuuko." My eyes traced the shadows on her collarbones. "Come on! You look perfectly fine. In fact you look rather thin."

She shook her head. "I know I'm not fat. But I'm not thin enough."

After that day, she started sitting with us during lunch. She would watch us eating, but she always refused to take anything herself. I think, after a while, she stopped wanting to eat, herself, and began to enjoy herself by just watching us eat. Vicarious eating. She would not even drink anything that was not water or ocha, saying those were just empty calories.

I have to admit something – watching her lose all that weight, I became jealous. She had always been slim, but now she was absolutely gorgeous. I, too, would have loved to lose weight. But when I saw how she ate (or rather, didn't see how she ate) and how she seemed to exercise all the time, I decided I would rather remain the way I was, and not forgo all the things she had given up.

**[Kirisawa Fuuko]**

I was not blind. I could see I that I was not fat; that I never was fat. To most people. But I was not satisfied; I had to become thinner. It was just a matter of perception – I regarded myself as too big, and so what if everyone else didn't? 

I decided, right then, that I was worth nothing. Nobody, much less Mikagami, would ever love me, because I was useless. Nobody cared about me, not even those I considered my friends. They didn't care, not really. But if I could attain that elusive control, that awesome willpower, then I would become perfect, and maybe – just maybe – I would be more of a person. If there was nothing else I could control, I would control this aspect of my life. 

And then, I would be beautiful. I would run in the snow and not make footsteps, float with the wind and not fall, I would walk between the raindrops and not get wet. I would cast no shadows and take up no space. I would have something nobody else would have – mastery over myself. People would look at me and I would know, none of them can do what I do.

"Look at that," Recca pointed to the playground. "They're just like us, when we were young."

We had walked over to the kindergarten to pick Yanagi up, and were waiting outside. I looked at the pair of children he had indicated – a girl and a boy, wrestling on the ground. 

"Yeah," I laughed, but there was no mirth in the laughter. It was true, they were just like us, and the thought struck me as being immensely sad. 

The boy, like Recca, would grow up to be strong, handsome, and loved by a wonderful girl. He would be popular, gregarious, contented. And the girl, she would grow up to become depressed, despairing, anorexic. 

It broke my heart, to imagine such a thing happening to that hapless innocent child. It was not something anyone should ever have to go through. It wasn't right. Nobody deserved it. How awful it would be, to know that such a future awaited you. I felt so terribly sorry for the little girl, to know that her lovely smile would fade away, and that her childlike joy would be rent. 

And yet, I myself suffered that way. And welcomed it.  

Was I anorexic? I couldn't tell. I would like for myself to be, certainly. It would give me a name, an identity, and it would mean that nobody could fault me for the way I behaved – if it was psychological, I couldn't help it. It would explain why my world felt so cold and I so weak. And the label was somehow enticing, in a sadly romantic manner. The way Mikagami's pain made him so beautiful. 

But I seriously doubted that I was. I didn't think I was thin enough, I pushed myself hard enough, or that I ate little enough. I was counting every calorie that I ate, and on good days I ate in excess of five to six hundred calories, on bad days, much more. It was too much. Maybe the way I thought – perhaps that was how anorexics thought. But I wasn't good enough. I wasn't sick enough. 

The idea of an eating disorder was haunting and enticing. After all, it is that which is the perfect torture, the perfect cruelty, the perfect sacrifice. It is the separation of body and mind, a casting off of the physical in the aspiration towards the psychological. I become more than just the things that I eat. I become distanced from every human being, and therefore, all my relationships with other people become more intensified, more enhanced. I would have more power than even Mori Kouran could have envisioned, for what was control over the world if one had not control over the self?

I really would like to be anorexic. To live a life that was cold and metal and ascetic. Eating nothing but water. I would be clean.

I was the master of the Fuujin; I should be able to fly with the winds I commanded. 

I would fly away.

"Fuuko?" I glanced up, it was Yanagi. "You okay? Come on, we have gym."

"Ugh." I groaned, sprawled over my desk. "I'm exhausted. I don't want to go for gym."

"Yeah, well, who wants to?" she laughed. 

It took a superhuman effort, but I managed to wrench myself out of my seat. I had to rest for a while, as usual, because of the stars that rushed to my head and made me sway a little. I grabbed the back of my chair to balance myself.

"Are you okay?" Yanagi looked concerned. "Do you need me to – "

"No, thanks, I'm fine." I shook my head to clear my vision. "It's just that I'm a little anaemic. That time of the month, you know?" Lies. I hadn't had it for a long time, longer than I could remember. I panted slightly, trying to catch my breath. A small wave of heat rolled through my body, culminating in a headache that pressed the sides of my skull.

She grinned. "Being a girl is no fun, huh?" She held my elbow to steady me. 

"Sure isn't," I agreed, looking down at her arm, comparing. Who was thinner? It was something I did to every female I saw. Criticize them, decide who was the thinner. 

I was so tired, I couldn't see how I could go for gym. But I went anyway, because the energy I needed would come from somewhere. It would; it had to. Which in a sense was good, because that was what helped me to lose weight. 

And after gym, I would drag myself down to the track to run. Round, and round, and round. The thought of what that would take made me feel like crying. I was so tired, I could hardly move. 

Food is disgusting. Eating is repulsive. Ugly. What I cannot afford to be. But I was so hungry! 

If I could, I would be thin. So thin, people could not but stare and whisper. They would shake their heads with disgust, but inside they would be jealous. They would envy my willpower, because it was something I had they could never aspire to. I wanted to have a control so tight, it controlled me too. I wanted to be free from the mess and muddle of life, far away like the moon, bleeding silver in the night. I wanted to disappear. The pain was nothing I couldn't take. It was worth it, if I could only be perfect. 

What joy was there in eating? What about it? I didn't need it. I didn't need joy, happiness, love. Superficial, shallow feelings. I didn't need those. After all, joy does not have any empirical function. People do not need joy to work, to live, to exist. Ergo, I didn't need joy. 

I didn't need joy, I didn't need happiness, I didn't need love or friendship or belonging either. I needed them as much as I needed food – which was not at all. 

**[Mikagami Tokiya]**

There were times I felt like screaming at Fuuko. She didn't seem to see me as a real human being, I was like a character from a book or a movie to her. It was perhaps my fault too, for projecting that image of myself, but still! I had become some Romantic Byronic hero, and I "stood a stranger in this breathing world,/ An erring spirit from another hurled". But I was not like that. I was human, too. Why wouldn't she treat me as such? I breathed, I bled, I hurt, just like any other person. I had my own mind, my own thoughts. She had put me on a pedestal and told herself, this is perfection. When I wasn't.                 

I was not some spirit of the air, not some distillation of pure thought and intellect. I was like her, I too made mistakes, I too had feelings. I was as base as any other. I had my problems, too. I was lost and confused. For so long I had lived as a pawn for someone else; he used me in a way so insidious I had not even known I was being used. And yet I couldn't give up the path I walked. It had become my identity, as much a part of myself as my arms and legs. I no longer knew who I was.

It hurt, to see her watching me with that gaunt, hungry face, as if she wanted to consume me. There was a strange longing in her tired eyes, and a deep desire masked her drained features. It shook me. What did she, this girl who had renounced even the most basic of all man's physical needs, want of me? What could she want from me? 

It hurt, to see her make herself suffer that way, although she was not the only person who must have suffered – Kurei, who could have known nothing but pain, Kagerou, who sent her husband to his death and felt the ache of centuries, Recca, who cried when he could not touch his mother. Myself, even, subject to the rigid, austere discipline of the Ensui. But Fuuko's misery was different from all of these. Her pain was so much greater, if only because she had brought it upon herself. Unlike all of us, there was nothing to keep her wrapped in her torment but her own twisted will. There was no sacrifice for another that would negate the anguish she wrought. No memory of a son or a lover or a sister to live for. There was nothing for her, but days of emptiness and hunger. 

It made me want to sit with her and cry with her, because – despite what she may think – I am human too and I hurt like everyone else. And her suffering touched something inside of me. I wanted to hold her and protect her from her mind. I wanted to make everything okay for her. I wanted to save her from herself.

But what good would that do? Absolutely none.

"Can I ask you a personal question?" 

"Go ahead." It never ceased to strike me how fragile and delicate Fuuko looked nowadays. She seemed a different person altogether, and I suppose, in a way, she was.

"Do you still like Yanagi?"

I laughed in the way people say is timeless. "What a question! I've thought about it myself. No, I don't. I never did, I don't think."

"Really? But when you first met her – "

"Oh, certainly, I loved. But it wasn't her that I loved. If I loved her, I wouldn't have tried to take her for myself. I would have been happy for her to be with Hanabishi, since that is evidently what she needs. I didn't love her. I loved my ideal. I saw in her my sister's qualities, her tenderness and her tranquillity. I'm not surprised Hanabishi calls her Princess, because she really is like one.

"But I realized I only felt for her because, in my mind's eye, I had made her into what I wanted her to be, and I didn't respect her for who she really was. I couldn't take her as she really was, I didn't care about who she really was. I wanted to imprison her in my ideal. I had dreams, dreams that I wanted her to fit into. I forgot that she has her own dreams, and that she shouldn't have to dream someone else's.

"No, it wasn't her I loved. I thought it was. I thought she was a distillation of my sister into another person, one who I could love and who would belong to me. But she wasn't, of course. I mistook my desire for my ideal as a desire for her. I couldn't see her as a person. I said I loved her, but really I didn't. There was nothing of her I loved. I could have loved the air and the clouds, and it wouldn't have made a difference.

"It wasn't a human being I loved. It was an idea."

Fuuko was silent for a while. I hoped she would be able to read between the lines.

"If I hadn't recognised this, I know I would have been very disappointed. Because now that I've accepted her as a different individual altogether, I can see all the things about her that don't fit into my ideal. And they are lovely things, but still, they don't fit. So I would have been very disappointed. It's like that, isn't it? Dreams are only good for looking at from afar. Because that's all they are – illusions. When you really get up close and take a good look at them in reality, they're hardly what you originally hoped for. They aren't half as nice."

"Are you saying there's no use in wishing for things to be better?" Her voice dripped resentment.

"No, not at all. What's wrong with that? There's a value in fantasies for their own sake. When reality is drab and ugly, it is that which fills your heart with delight and gives you something to treasure in you memory. Don't you agree?"

"But it's so awful, to carry a wish around, and work for that goal, only to find out when you get there that it doesn't mean anything."

"Life is like that, Fuuko. But remember the journey. Remember the hope, and the beauty of the wish. And be satisfied with that, because if not you will never be contented."

She turned on me, eyes flashing. "It's all very well for you to say that, Mikagami. But don't you realize how hypocritical you sound?" 

"I know what it sounds like. But I'm not perfect," I said, spreading my hands. I forced myself to be candid. "I gave myself only one aim, and when I fulfilled that, I thought I would be able to die. When I got there, I discovered how wrong I was. I was so disappointed, and if you guys weren't around I don't know what I would have done. I thought the world had ended, everything I believed in was a lie. And sometimes life is cruel that way. But that wasn't the end. Life goes on. There is so much more out there for me, and I will not be able to appreciate it unless I can let go of the past. I cannot walk into the future looking backwards." 

I covered her hand with mine and looked straight into her eyes. "Don't make the same mistakes I did, Fuuko. You have the chances I once wasted, don't choose the wrong path. Remember that sometimes a dream is that much more beautiful if it is left unfulfilled. If I mean anything at all to you, then take what I've said seriously. Your youth is precious, Fuuko, don't throw it away like I did mine."

Her gaze was wet as she searched for something to say. "It's not just about being thin. You would never understand." Her voice was low and unclear.

Good. She was finally talking about it. About that. Nice to know she trusted me so much. "Then help me to. Maybe I understand more than you think."

"No. You could never understand. I could tell you, but you wouldn't really know." She laughed shortly. "Oh, who am I kidding? What is my suffering compared to yours? I'm just fat…"

"Fuuko, what are you talking about? Don't put down your pain. It's harsh enough that I can see it in your face, in your eyes." 

"I can't tell you anything, Mikagami, because I don't know what to say. I'm too confused… I don't understand anything. I only know this one thing, hunger. And I hate it, I hate doing this to myself. But I need to, don't you see? I'm too fat. And I can't let myself get any fatter. I cannot. I just cannot. You can't understand, how afraid I am of gaining weight or even just remaining the same. If only I could be like you, you're a guy and you're thinner than me. It isn't fair. I can't take it anymore, but I have to…"

I held her fingers, rubbing the cold blue tips. "Don't cry, Fuuko. It's alright." I didn't know what to say. I wasn't used to counselling people. It was awkward, and I grasped for words to salve her hurt. "You're not fat. You're beautiful." 

"Can you take it away? Can you take all this away, Mikagami? Can you take it away and make me feel normal again?"

"Will you let me? But you must tell me first what you want, because I don't understand. I want to help you. Let me." These were not words I was used to saying.

She shook her head, perplexed. She seemed more to be talking to herself than to me. "No – no. I don't want you to. Can you take it all away? But I will have nothing left then."

"What? What do you want?" My voice was gentle. "You are already very thin you know."

"It's not just about being thin," she repeated, covering her face. "I want to control my life… I want nobody to be able to hurt me more than I can hurt myself… If only I could control my life."

I closed my eyes, wondering what to do with this frail and broken girl. In another life, I would have spurned her need and left her alone. I would have called her weak, and thought her cowardly for not being able to face her own mind. But she was not weak. It was not weak, to refuse the self satiety, comfort, well-being. It was not weak, to push the body over its limits. 

"After my sister was murdered," I began haltingly, "I was like you. I was depressed and confused. All I wanted was for something to make my complicated life simple. Then my teacher took me under his wing. He taught me discipline and control. He taught me how to deny myself. He taught me the beauty of austerity and the value of restraint. He taught me that I needed nothing, except my mind. He taught me all that, all these things you have convinced yourself is the truth."

I stopped, and swallowed. It was hard to think about what happened. "But everything he taught me was a lie. You know that. Yet you force yourself to live by those standards." She was shivering; I covered her shaking shoulders with my school jacket. "You're hurting all the people who care about you." 

"Stop it," she whispered, "Stop making me cry. Just – just leave me alone. Forget everything I said. I don't need this. All these nice things you're saying. They're not true. Nobody cares about me. Stop making me think things that aren't real. Please leave me alone." 

I sighed. "You can't really think that, can you? But – fine. I will leave you alone. I will be back, though, and I will keep coming back, until you realize that there are people who do care about you, and that you must stop doing this to yourself."

"Don't you get it? I do know that. But I don't want to stop."

She flung my blazer at me as she ran off. 

It was chilling to see how much she was like myself, how she had forced herself into her pain. I remembered what it had taken to make me change my mindset; it had almost killed me. I could only hope that when her turning point came, it wouldn't her.

_* Lord Byron, 'Lara' (1814)_


	8. chapter eight

Chapter Eight 

** [Kirisawa Fuuko]**

Sometimes you almost make me think you really do care, although you don't. If you really did, you would have given me more than just an eloquent speech, more than just those pretty words. 

Sometimes I imagine there's a future for us. I dream about the both of us, together, flying into the length and breadth of time. I imagine you smiling, a smile just for me. That smile takes away all the cold and the hunger – a hunger that is not just for food but also for love and belonging. One day, I tell myself, we will get there. I think that maybe, just maybe, we will survive together, and learn together, and live together, and love together. And that the palm of your hand will fit mine like it was meant to be, because it was.

But life is not like that. Even you can tell me how dreams are better left unfulfilled. Is that a hint? That I will never have you, that you will never want me? That I will never be thin enough, or strong enough, or beautiful enough? Is that, like the thought of us together, just an illusion? I care about you. I care so much. I care too much. 

I ache, an old forever ache right from the depthless ends of my heart. An ache that is timeless and eternal. It is as old as the mountains that were painted in the beginnings of time, and as vast and endless as the expanses of the seas. It has existed since life began, and will echo in the winds of the eras until all life, and even time, dies away. It resonates in the hearts of all man, of the grandest emperors and the lowliest servants. 

I do not, and will never, deserve you. Despite the way I want you. I want so much for there to be something tangible, for there to be more than just scraps of an 'us'. I will never be worthy of you. You, who had so much taken away from you, have become so much more than me, living a life so blessed when compared to yours. I wonder at what strength you must have; you life could not have been perfect, but you are. So few have what you do. And you deserve someone better than me, someone as pure and as beautiful as you are, not someone blind, selfish and insensitive as I am. 

I want you so much, I want to be allowed to love you, to cradle your head in my hands and stroke your hair of ash, to hold you and know you are mine and I am yours. But that is just a dream.

But sometimes I feel like it doesn't matter. I feel so anaesthetized. Like nobody can hurt me. Cocooned in a shelter of numbness, my pain has been secreted away. Nobody can touch me. And I know that you cannot hurt me.

Sometimes I feel like my heart has been broken so many times, shredded into pieces, again and again and again and again and again and again, until all that is left is a nothingness I cannot feel, and cannot fear. Thousands of pieces, fluttering like snow over the hollowness in my chest. I don't need you. I don't need you to be there for me. I don't need you to love me. I don't need you to care for me.

Nothing and everything hurts, so badly but not at all. So much pain it doesn't hurt. My heart is broken, my body is broken, my mind is broken, into pieces of pieces of pieces, again and again and again and again and again. It doesn't matter anymore.

Days are futile. Living is futile. Everything becomes dull, meaningless. A velvety ennui envelops me, and brings me to a place that is the space between thought and feeling, where there is only nothing. The world becomes stultified, misted, and I am floating numbly above it. I feel like I don't even exist.

Memory and time implodes, unflinching, in the white-light glare of an Ageless silence. Pain becomes cold and graceful and elegant. Envy, desire, joy all fade to agony, but this agony is somehow beautiful and cruel at the same time. 

And I am falling, weightless and sightless, into that great void of nothingness, where all my soul resides. 

**[Mikagami Tokiya]**

In the midst of everything that is my life, I have a core of empathy. And in that hidden-away place beats a heart as tender and as tenuous as anyone else's. Once I believed that if I stored it somewhere safe, it would never get hurt, and it would never hurt me. 

It was hurting now. For a girl. 

It made me want to cry, when I saw how she was torturing herself. It made me want to run to her and hold her and protect her from the world and from herself. It made me want to tell her that everything would be okay. Because she was like me, because she was me, in a different age. I wanted to give her all the things I had always needed but never got. Love and care and safety. It was as if I was being forced back into that awful dark period, but this time, I could change it and make things right. The way they should have been right from the beginning.

Once, long ago, I had a chance at happiness. If I had made the right decisions, I wouldn't have had to suffer as I had all these ceaseless years. But life is deceiving, and it is never as clear as it becomes in retrospect. Alone and unsure, without someone to guide me, I could not but turn to that darkness of revenge and anguish; it was a darkness disguised as light and deliverance. Was it my fault, that I could not tell? I did not know better. If only someone had told me, then, where my path was leading to. If only someone had told me that I, too, deserved to be happy. 

It was up to me now to be that person to Fuuko. I saw in her all the things that had happened to me during that terrible long-ago time. Nobody had saved me, but I could save her. It hurt, because she made me remember so many things I had wanted to forget, and I hurt, knowing she suffered the same way I did. 

But I didn't just hurt for her because she reminded me of myself. I hurt for her as she was, too. I wouldn't make the same mistake I had made with Yanagi. I wouldn't see her as a part of me; I saw her for herself too. 

I wanted to confront all the people who spoke of her in hushed whispers. "Mikagami," they said to me, "you had better go talk to that friend of yours. She used to be perfectly fine, but now she looks half-dead almost. And so skinny! Is she anorexic?" It seemed to pull at something within me, to know that this friend of mine – a person I valued – was in the grip of the deadliest of all psychiatric disorders, and I couldn't do anything to stop her.

**[Kirisawa Fuuko]**

I never meant for anyone to be able to affect me the way he did. Then, why? I thought I could control the way I felt, and that I would treat this – thing – as just a passing crush, here for the excitement and the thrill, nothing more. But my feelings grew to become so much more. I didn't even want to control the way I felt. 

Perhaps I liked him not for him but for me. For the sake of liking someone. For the intensity of emotions I would never otherwise get, because everything else was so dull and I was so weary.

Maybe that was why I welcomed the bittersweet sting. Why I looked forward to the rare instances when we met in the hallways in school, and the even rarer instances when we talked. 

I had to force myself to remember that I meant nothing to him. I wasn't worth anything to him. And it was selfish to even think otherwise, because if I truly loved him, I would want him to be happy, and he would never be happy with me, and so it was wrong to want him for myself.

I felt like an oxymoron sometimes. A great love and a greater hate existed simultaneously within me, twisted into a web of pain and desire. How could I love someone so much, when I hated myself even more? 

There were times when the hatred rose up in me and threatened to tear me apart. 

I wish someone would hurt me, badly, because I deserve it. I don't want to be happy anymore. I can't take it. I feel like my mind is splintering and breaking apart, and what will be left is only a soft raw centre of hatred and seething anger.

I'm so angry and so mad and so upset with myself. I can't describe it. It's so intense, it's tearing me to pieces, this insane disappointment. I feel so worthless. It's a farce, liking him, because he is so incredibly wonderful and perfect, and I am – I am me. He is like the sky, and I am the dust, insignificant and inconsequential under the overarching heavens. 

Voices scream inside my head, screaming pain and anger and disapproval, and I can almost imagine them crystallising into an agony so great it shatters my mind. 

I want to be beautiful. But I'm not beautiful, I'm ugly and sick and worthless. I don't deserve anything, much less him. He is what is really beautiful. He is perfect, and I envy him. I respect him. But I don't deserve him. I hate myself, for imposing myself on him. If he had my life, unlike me, he would have achieved so much; all he has known is suffering, yet he has come so far. He makes me so ashamed of myself. If he treated me like dirt, it wouldn't be more than I deserve, but I know he never will.

I scream in my head to shut out the shame, to silence the voices crying at me, try to close my eyes and my ears to block out the world. I can't take it can't take it can't take it. Leave me alone, everyone and everything, please just leave me alone, I hate myself so much and I am so ugly and disgusting and repulsive and sordid, I don't deserve anything, not friendship or care or concern or love. 

This feeling, is like dust, like water, like blood, that runs through fingers and tears through the mind, sharp and dull all at the same time. It turns from desire to blinding pain, and I have never known anything but darkness and ache and pain and a hurt like hope, and hatred like love, everything and nothing at all.

I felt this when I ate, when I purged, when I hungered, when I cut, when I cried, when I ran, when I sighed. I felt like I was being driven to that everlasting downward spiral that is madness.

Why is it, Mikagami, that I can only talk to you this way, alone in my room? When the endless and absolute night that encircles us shortens and lengthens the distances between, so that you are only a few streets from where I lie but further than a thousand universes away? Why is it that my words are only soundless and insignificant, and my heart aching so loudly you cannot hear me? Why is it that all the pretty speeches I can dream up for you in this everlasting velvet darkness fade away in the glare of day, and nothing remains then of these beautiful conversations I imagine at night? Here in my room you are so close, I can almost breathe the curve of your slender feminine frame, but you will never know how near you are to me.

You are so beautiful in such a shallow way. You are like a sleek chiselled youth of ancient times, one of those silent androgynous creatures exulted by humankind across history, from the warriors of our soil to the decadent Greek conquerors, to the delicate cultured Indian emperors. You are not from this age but a thousand millennia ago. Your place is in a land of history and ancient beauty, silently glistening in light thrown from soft oil-lamps, your slender deft hands coaxing a music of desire and sweetness from some antique instrument, your skin luminous and incandescent. You do not belong here in these foolish times. You are more than human; you are history, you are time, you are eternity.

Maybe that is why I do not deserve you. For I could only defile your beauty: I, a fat, thick, darkly ugly woman. I am portly with rolls of fat, coarse and vulgar and abominable. I would never be worthy of someone with your timeless grace and ageless exquisiteness, unless, by some miracle, I transformed myself into someone more like you. Perhaps, only then.  

I began to feel like I had two different people living inside of me. One was a merciless, relentless taskmaster that pushed me to control every aspect of my life. The other was my unconscious self, who screamed at me that everything I was doing was wrong, and that I was abusing my body and my mind. 

Sometimes I agreed. Sometimes I knew I was not fat, and that there was no logic that would justify my driving myself to exhaustion, and that there was nothing wrong in my having something to eat before dinner. Sometimes. Mostly, when I was very hungry and conscious of it.

_But if I ate, I knew I would hate myself even more when my real self took over again. I would look in the mirror and see the fat all over my body and wonder whatever made me think I was thin enough to let myself eat. I had to stop lying to myself._


	9. part fourth - winter - chapter nine

Part Fourth – Summer – Chapter Nine 

The coolness of spring was receding in the face of summer. The skies were bluer, the sun brighter. Soon it would be the holidays – one year ago, those holidays had brought so much change to all of our lives. 

I scrawled all over the book on my desk, swinging my legs. I could feel the sun on my neck, and counted the drops of sweat on the nape of the person in front of me, but I wasn't hot myself. The last lesson of the last day of the last week of the term – nobody was paying attention. There was anticipation in the air, and I fidgeted impatiently, waiting to get out of class. 

Finally, the bell rang, the faithful, loyal bell. The teacher smiled, and wished us a good holiday, and there was a massive scraping of chairs as we all jumped up. Time to go.

I hurried along with the rest of the school to the exit, where I burst out into the afternoon. The holidays stretched out before me, the days and endless days of nothing and relief. I didn't know what I would do. I didn't have plans. I didn't have things to attend to. I sighed, blissful. 

As I started out of the school gate, Mikagami fell into step beside me. I looked at him, and frowned slightly for his benefit. He often approached me and lectured me tirelessly on my eating habits. I loathed and loved these incidents. I didn't want anyone to stop me. But I wanted to spend time with him. And I could imagine that he did it because he cared for me. 

When we sparred, tossing back and forth reasons why – why not – to eat, he pulled me apart and dragged his questions over my heart. We met, faced off, and debated. He knew that secret part of me, knew why I ate and why I didn't. He knew what motivated me and what scared me. He heard everything, except what I didn't tell him, because I couldn't tell him what I didn't know. There were so many things I didn't understand, and maybe he knew more than I did even. He was so perceptive. There were so many things I didn't tell him that he understood. If he could see that part of my soul that I could not, I thought, perhaps it was because he had the same soul. But who was I kidding.

"Please… Not today. Don't do this to me."

"Fuuko. Then stop it."

I sighed again, theatrically. "Why are you doing this? Why can't you just leave me alone?" Unconsciously I was trying to force him to say he cared, to say I mattered to him. At the same time I hated myself for doing it.

"Doesn't what I think mean anything to you? I… I'm begging you. Take care of yourself. Doesn't that mean anything?"

Which meant more to me? This – this obsession, or him? My heart twisted. Mikagami, that proud, remote warrior, humbled himself for me. And yet, maybe pride meant nothing to him. Maybe he was above even that, and his touching words, though they had the ability to move me, were to him just a means to an end. Suddenly I had an overwhelming sense of farce and travesty. All that mattered was beauty. Not the circus of relationships and all that sham. 

"No. It doesn't. Go away, will you? Leave me alone. I don't want to go through this again. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to think about it. I'm tired of hearing about this, this, this all the time from you. I'm sick of it." 

He raised his eyebrows for a second. "Fuuko – "

"Go away! Just go away!" I was so mad. Even as the anger came I could feel it was illogical and unwarranted, but I let the redness wash over me. "Leave me alone!" 

There was a moment of tenseness as my scream died off, echoing through my head. Mikagami's countenance was severe. 

"Certainly," he said gravely. He slipped his hand in his pocket and pulled out an envelope, handing it to me formally. 

"I will be travelling to my summer residence at Nagaoka soon and will be remaining there for the duration of the holidays. In this packet is a train ticket; it is yours. But I will not wait. If you are coming, be at the station on time."

He flicked his ponytail and was gone.

"I…" My irritation deflated, leaving in its place a vague shame. "I don't understand you," I whispered, bewildered. "I don't understand you."

**[Mikagami Tokiya]**

She had yelled at me; I was pleased. With anger comes resolution, and I could believe I was getting through to her. So I passed her the extra ticket, knowing she would be there. I couldn't put the trip off any longer – I hadn't gone, the previous year – and I wanted to keep an eye on her. I admit, though, that it seemed a rather far-fetched reason to spend months alone with her.

I didn't know what she would think. That I felt for her perhaps, the way she felt for me. 

I knew. Of course I knew, though she did not say. I would have been a fool not to notice, not to see the way she looked at me, not to hear it in her voice or in the gossip of others. And I was not a fool. I didn't care if she thought I liked her too, though I had no feelings for her. 

Long ago I had decided that, if I loved someone, I would do it unreservedly, completely, and without question. It was the one event I would allow myself where I would not suppress my instinct and my emotion. First, though, I had to love someone. I thought I had loved Yanagi, but I didn't. Just as Fuuko thought she loved me but really didn't. 

There was one thing I couldn't understand though. When she spoke to me, it was with the manner of a subordinate. Often I called her by her first name, while she never called me anything but the formal surname. Even the jesting 'Mi-chan' appellation had disappeared. Did she feel she was not good enough to speak to me as an equal, as a friend? I sensed there would be so much more she could tell me if she felt me an equal. 

Philosophy is so funny a subject. It is formulated by observations on the nature of life, but itself affects the lives of those who subscribe to it. Was it then philosophy, if the life it was derived from was the life it affected? Was it valuable then? I believed so strongly in some things. But maybe, just maybe, what I believed was worthless, because only my belief gave it virtue. So was it meaningless, or otherwise? I struggled for an answer, for myself and for Fuuko. 

I walked by a park, my route taking me past a large pond. For a moment I stood there, unmoving, watching the reflection of the trees in the water. A feeling of calmness came over me as I looked at the still movement. The water was a mirror that echoed the surroundings over and back into themselves, creating a corridor of endless symmetry. The scene was beautiful, despite the reflection, or perhaps because of it. 

I reached down and picked up a pebble, and threw it into the middle of the pond, destroying the picture. 

However, as I resumed my walk home, the shattered pieces shivered and reformed into reflection, unseen by anyone but the impassive sky. 

**[Kirisawa Fuuko]**

The next few days passed as in a dream. I remained at home the whole time, persistent in a lyrical solitude. I was conscious of a rarefied sort of beauty; every movement I made, every thought I had, down to the minutest details, were charged with poetic exquisiteness. The gentle expressive sweep of my arm as I slid doors open, the soft light that played on the morning floor, the poignantly sweet melancholy of the books I read: all were charming, romantic, elegiac.

Even when I had accidents, like when I dropped a bowl on the floor, I was moved by the strange profound loveliness of the event: it was meant to happen, I felt, it was intended by the heavens and all that live beneath them to happen, simply because it was beautiful. It was beautiful; all was beautiful. I felt more spirit than flesh. And since all was beautiful, there was no beauty, though it existed in everything; there was only truth. Beauty only comes with the appointment of human emotion and rationale. Devoid of men, all things cease to have beauty, for only the perception of humankind bestows explicit items with aesthetic value. 

Some strange joy had come over me; it was joy and sadness both. It was as if I had come out from depression over to the other side and found happiness, or passed over from happiness into sadness. It was all the same. It was as if I had been baffled in an endless muddle, but had now freed myself and burst out into the bright clarity of a new day. 

I was floating, but not in the way of before, when I had merely hovered over experience: now I was flying through life, distilling only the finest and more exquisite senses of being. I was filled with verve, and the lack of it, and my eyes twinkled incessantly. I felt as if I had surpassed the mundane needs of humankind. I needed no sleep, no food, nothing. Even the moments where I felt restrained by depression were curiously profound. I needed nothing. Not even food. 

He was behind me as soon as I paid the taxi driver, offering to help with my suitcase. He was polite and indifferent, every bit the cultured gentleman. Tipping the porter, he led me to the first-class lounge of the train station: I was impressed. As we waited for our departure he read a newspaper, holding it up rather than placing it flat on the table as I did, and crossed his legs. 

I sipped a glass of water, watching people through the tinted glass windows. Sunlight fell blackened into the room, colouring all the corners with its subdued light.

This should be a vacation to look forward to. The two of us, alone and together for such a long time – it was a dream come true. Still, I was vaguely uneasy, for a corona of displeasure and disapproval radiated from Mikagami – the aloof posture, the stilted civility, the dignified manner. I knew I should have to apologize for shouting at him, but it seemed wrong, at this juncture anyway. Or maybe I was just too proud. 

The trip would be fine, I told myself. It would be wonderful. I would see Nagaoka, a province I had never before been to. It was a lovely place, I was told, and steeped in history. It was the bastion of the Nagao samurai family, whose famous son Uesugi Kenshin had allied with the clans – the Hokage included – opposing Oda Nobunaga so long ago. The Kirisawa family had, in fact, been retainers to the Uesugi*, as had the Mikagami. But that was all really long ago and didn't mean a thing today.  Most of all, though, I would be with Mikagami. I would get to know him better. And maybe, just maybe, we would…

"Fuuko." He stood above me. "Let's go."

Outside of the lounge, the station was much less pleasant. It was noisy and hectic, and the combined heat of the early summer and the press of people made it hot and uncomfortable, despite the air-conditioning. I had to hurry so as not to lose Mikagami. 

Fortunately, he was familiar with the place, and confidently navigated the platforms, getting us onto our train without incident. I settled back in my plush seat for the ride. There was no fanfare, no long shrill whistle, to mark the moment when the carriage changed from stillness to motion, only a slow realization of movement. North, north, the tracks muttered as they passed beneath the train. North, further north than you have ever been. Though, I told myself, it was not actually that far north.

An odd apprehension faced me. We had just left the cold winter and spring months, and now it seemed I was heading back into them. Up north it was still chilly, and somehow I had become so much more sensitive to the cold.

I didn't quite know what to expect from the trip. It would be lovely to spend it completely with Mikagami, but I knew he had to study, and much of the time I would have to entertain myself. I was fine with that – he had given me a holiday, it was too much of me to expect any more. 

In a way I felt embarrassed at accepting this enormous favour he extended to me. I was imposing on him, on his studying, on his home, on his time, on his life. It was a nuisance I shouldn't have become. In fact, I had almost declined his offer, but at the last moment, something – I know not what – made me accept it. And now that I had, I was determined to make the most of it. 

I gazed out of the window in silence as the scenery raced by. The time dragged on, and we pulled into station after station, so many I could not remember their names. Each place we stopped at was an area with its own character and significance. Yet though I passed through them, I knew nothing of the lands I travelled. It was meaningless. It was as if I had dreamed them up, for they didn't seem real to me.

By the time we arrived at Tokyo station, dusk was falling. The dying sun drenched the city in deep hues of red, making it look as if each building were painted against a salmon sky. I could hardly breathe – it was absolutely gorgeous. 

I was completely exhausted. There were so many things I felt I should think about – how I should behave towards Mikagami on this trip, consider why he invited me at all in the first place, ponder on the significance of travelling and all that – but I was too tired, and I didn't care. It didn't seem important. Philosophizing would not change the fact that I was there, with him, and what good would it do to think too much? 

I seemed to be moving in some sort of half-conscious state as I lugged my bags from one platform to the next, all the time keeping my eyes locked on Mikagami's back, the one thing that kept me from getting lost in the busyness. I was drawing myself into the silent private places of my heart, uncaring of the things that were going on around me. An unheard music played in my head that was of the depths of my soul, a tuneless lyricism that nobody, not even I, could hear. My mind was still and quiet. It was right, it was meant to be, I kept saying to myself, as I settled down in the train for the journey to Nagaoka. But what was it that was right? What was it that was meant to be? I could not tell. 

**[Ishijima Domon]**

The three of us that were left sat quietly in the park. Nearby, the voices of happy children chased the waning dusk. Hanabishi took Yanagi's hand and squeezed it in a gesture of comfort and reassurance I had seen many times the last summer break. She looked at him with an unspoken question in her eyes.

I knew what it was, because I wanted an answer too. (But Hanabishi did not squeeze my hand. Thank goodness for that.) 

We all wondered about Fuuko. We each of us loved her in our own right. She was more than an acquaintance, more than a sister. She was part of us, and we all felt a closeness that was forged of fear and death during that tournament. 

It hurt that she had shut us out of her life. She had shrunk into her soul, and sometimes she looked at us like we weren't even there. It was as if she didn't see us. In her world, we had ceased to be.

I think we were all a bit scared of her. We never knew how she would behave. Would she be outgoing and gregarious, as she was at times, or would she be silent and diffident? Why was she so cold to us? Had we done something to anger her? But we dared not ask. 

I wanted her to reach out to me. I desperately wanted to help her. So many times before had we struggled together to overcome some adversary, but now she turned from me. I didn't understand her any longer. She was a different Fuuko from the strong, robust girl that played with me in my sandpit days. I couldn't recognize her.  

What was happening to her? It scared all of us, because we could not understand it. We begged Mikagami to take her with him on his trip; he seemed to be the only person she would listen to. He agreed, not as reluctantly as we expected: he too was worried.

For once I hated that thing that was me, slow, boorish, stupid. Maybe if I were smart like Mikagami or something I would be able to help Fuuko. I couldn't understand her, or know what she was going through. I didn't know what was happening. I never knew what to say around her. That part of me that was sensitive wanted to take away all that sadness that I saw in her face. But I never said anything, because I didn't know what to say. I wanted to sit by her when she slept and guard her from herself. I wanted to give her courage and hope and friendship. But I was too stupid, and I couldn't do anything.

All I could do for now was hope. That Mikagami would be able to take care of her. That he would help her where we could not. That she would return smiling at us. 

That she would find herself again.

**[Kirisawa Fuuko]**

I leant my head against the window of the train. The sun had slipped beneath the black earth, and the darkness turned the glass into a dim mirror that reflected the car in itself. I stared into my eyes, getting lost in the mix of light and darkness. Where was I going? 

After the long journey from the suburbs up to Tokyo, the ride seemed mercifully short, being only about an hour and a half long. Mikagami sat straight-backed beside me, reading a magazine. Once in a while he would glance at me, but otherwise left me alone. 

It should have made me so pleased to sit next to him, but for some reason it didn't. I was too tired to care, I think. I was just too tired. I longed for a bed, and warm soft sheets. I wanted to sleep.

I couldn't understand myself. For so long, for no reason, I had become immersed in a desperate despair. I was swimming through deep water it felt like. I was dancing through a sea that was cold and black and so familiar to me. The chill was seeping into me, into my skin, into my bones, into my heart. I wanted to escape and yet I didn't. I couldn't understand. What was this depression?

I felt my eyes start to prickle and water, so I closed them. I didn't want to cry and pity myself, it was weak and egoistic. Yet something in me was breaking, and it hurt, and I couldn't even put a name to it. 

The movement of the train was slight, and I hardly realized that we had stopped. Mikagami folded up his magazine and stuffed it in his bag: time to go. 

Suddenly I was aware that something was missing. It was that nagging feeling that I had forgotten something, or that I was going to leave something behind. I flung open my carry-on and rummaged through it; felt in the crevices in and between our seats, and searched the carpeted floor.

"What is it?" he asked.

" I lost something."

"What did you lose?"

I froze. Slowly I straightened. 

"Perhaps I could help you find it. What did you lose?" he asked again.

I was stunned. "I don't know," I said.

What had I lost? I didn't know. I didn't know what it was, or how much it was, or how significant it was. I didn't know when I lost it. Was it any one definable moment, or was it a gradual fading away? I couldn't say. All I could tell was that it was gone, and that I felt empty without it. And I couldn't find it again.

I didn't see much of the city as our taxi swung through its streets but the flash after flash after flash of the street lamps. I was so exhausted, I could only rest my head against the glass and stare unseeingly out into the flying buildings. 

Something like a fear passed over me. A fist in the pit of my stomach twisted, digging into my body. I was far from home, far from my family, far from everything I was used to. All I had was him. And yet I could feel safe with him, because of that unspeakable bond between all of us that faced death together at the tournament. I remember reading that soldiers who fought together in the great wars were driven to fight by their loyalty to their comrades rather than to their country, and that, having survived, there existed incredible love between them. When I felt alone I was comforted to believe that there were people who, though they may not understand me, loved me. 

We stopped before an apartment building in what seemed to be a respectable area. Mikagami explained that the apartment was rented out most months of the year but summer, which was when he used it. 

I struggled with my things down an endless corridor, and almost fell asleep as he unlocked the door. Tired, so tired, every fiber of my body weakly cried out. Let me rest. Even after Mikagami had disappeared with our bags, I still leant against the frame of the door, trying to find the energy to move away. 

"Kirisawa – " 

"Coming," I sighed, propelled to motion by the external voice. It was dim within the flat, with only a few lights turned on. All I got in my exhausted state was an impression of neatness and order and shining metal classiness, like a show flat. That, and the sparkle of the city lights spread out below the window. 

Half-asleep, I have no idea how I managed to undress and wash up, but it was not a moment too soon that I flopped onto the lush bed and pulled the covers over me. 

It was a mystery I never solved how a high-school orphan like Mikagami was able to own and maintain a residence such as this one, or how he had come about an income as large as his. Rich grandparents, perhaps, or an immense inheritance. I would never know, and it did not matter. He was more attractive as an enigma than he was explained. 

I woke up that first morning long after the sun had risen. I was excited, and at the same time rather embarrassed that I had behaved so poorly the night before. But no matter. 

The curtains were closed, like at the beginning (or the end?) of a stage performance. The room was cool and dark. Slowly I drew the drapes open, letting the summer sun in ray by ray. The view of the city in the morning was not half as breathtaking as it was at night; daylight was so much more cruel than the gentle orange glitter of the night-time city lights. The unfamiliar sprawl was dusty and grimy, the dullness broken here and there by grubby patches of greenery.

I wondered why I had come. Mikagami would be busy with his books the whole while, and I would have nothing to do and nobody to do it with. And of course there was that problem about eating. I couldn't eat in front of him. I just couldn't. Although he knew of my obsession, and had seen me abstain from eating in school, it was a totally different thing altogether to live with him, because it was as if he started to play a more integral part in my life. It was as if I had to share my eating – my not eating – habits with him. And it was something I was so selfish about.

On the other hand, it was perhaps good that I was staying with him, because I would feel more pressured to "keep up appearances" and not binge so often. I wanted to show him that yes, I did not eat, that yes, I had self-control, and that I was actually good at something.

*This is true. Except the Mikagami family bit. 


	10. chapter ten

Chapter Ten

**[Mikagami Tokiya]**

The moment I woke up I had a bad feeling. I sat up in bed, and ran a hand through my hair, looking over to the mirror on my left. 

Aargh. I was right.

Bad hair day!!

It was not proper to enter her room, so I waited for her to emerge, using the time to have a bath and straighten out the kinks in my hair. It was late morning by the time she awoke, surprisingly late, but she had been so exhausted the night before, so I suppose I could understand why. 

"Breakfast?" I asked.

She gave a little sniff. "No." Then, softer, "no, thank you."

I shrugged. "Do you like the place?" I asked, offhand. Her eyes quickly swung across the room, taking it all in. The lush carpeting, glass-and-teak casings, cream curtains, floor-to-ceiling windows. Simple, minimalist, tasteful. 

She nodded noncommittally. "Not bad." Her expression blasé, bored.

 "So what do you want to do today?"

"Whatever." She settled herself on the couch, savagely, primly. 

"You want to see the city?"

"Not really."

"There are some interesting shrines, if you want – "

"No."

"A movie?"

"No."

"Er – " I tried my best to be nice to her, but her monosyllabic answers were getting on my nerves. She turned away from me and sneered at the dining table, rolling her eyes. "So what do you want?" I asked, keeping calm. I was good at that, controlling my temper.

"Whatever, I don't care," she drawled tonelessly. 

I sat down next to her. "Okay, then, let's talk."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Let's, you know, have a talk." I could hardly believe what I was saying.

"Do you have to be so damn cheerful in the morning? I think I liked you better when you kept your mouth shut." Her expression was black with irritability. 

I could hardly believe what she was saying.

"Excuse me?" 

"Why? Why is it always talk, talk, talk? You've said more in the last two weeks than all the rest of the year I've known you. Why can't you just be silent? Do you want to be like Hanabishi? Are we having a bad influence on you? Talk, talk, talk. All you do is talk. And eat. Eat, eat, eat. Everything you say to me is about eating. It's like, all that I am to you is a damn mouth. And the only thing that matters is whether or not food goes in. But it doesn't matter that this mouth wants to be left alone, because you judge me by your standards and everyone else's, not mine. But maybe what you think is important is not what I think is important and what you think is important should not be the issue at all because it is MY life after all and who gives you the right to meddle in it, that's what I'd like to know. In case you were wondering, I'm fine. I'm totally fine! Nothing's wrong!" She let out a deflatied sigh, ending her aimless rambling. 

"All I want to be is left alone, you know?" she added softly. "But then, not really." She turned away so I would not see the tears she did not cry. "I don't know what I want, Mikagami. Can you tell me? Can you tell me the things in my heart that even I cannot see?"

I wanted to reach out and touch this fragile spirit who called my name. But then she turned back to face me, dry-eyed and sulky.

"But who am I to you, right? We are two separate people, and my concerns are not yours. I doubt you can find it in your heart the magnanimity to help me. I am caustic and cynical and acerbic. It's a thankless, hopeless task. So why bother. Right? Why bother." She frowned irritatedly.

And she was saying all these things about herself. The person she put down as being too ungrateful to care about was her own self. What sort of person thought such bitter things about herself?

I could not comprehend the lack of self-esteem she must have had. How could she think herself worthless who was so precious?

The afternoon passed badly. I studied some, I don't know what she did. We were unconsciously-on-purpose ignoring each other. She was being irritable and was in a bad humour. I understood, as much as I was able to. Depression is not just the overwhelming flood of despair, is not just the touching stirring sad moments, it is also petulance like sand in the eye. It is then that it loses that quality that moves people. It is easy to cry for someone who is so alien and is hurting so much she wants to hurt herself, or do some other drastic grandiose thing. But when that velvet darkness turns to black grit and mud in frustrated prickliness, it becomes mundane and tedious, and unlovable, though kindness is needed just as much, kindness and understanding. Man can only love pain when it is dignified and grief when it is anguished, and forgets so easily that its less beautiful sister, irritation, can be just as torturous to the sufferer. 

I understood, but not enough. So I left her alone, doubting it was the best thing to do, but I am not her keeper. 

There was a space on the roof, it was deserted most of the time. It was where I practised the skills I learnt at such great cost – I had given so much to learn them, I was not about to let them go to waste through that most insidious vice of disregard. Besides, it was a comfort to fall into the certainty and assurance of the Ensui in the times when life becomes gruelling.

Fuuko was there on the roof, clutching her throat and looking decidedly ill. During the winter she had lost most of her tan – all of us had – and her pale taut skin seemed to be drawn tightly, far too tightly, over her bones. Her thin hair, pulled back into a tail, strained at her cheekbones, and her face was hollow and her eyes gaunt.

"Are you okay?"

She whirled around. 

"It's there. It's still there. It's sick. I can feel it," she said absently, scabbing lightly at her gullet. "But I shouldn't. It is out, it is all out."

"What is?"

"Huh?" She looked lost, as if seeing me for the first time. "Oh – you know," gesturing vaguely. 

"You know," she repeated, doubtfully, more to herself than to me. "Never mind." She shook herself and ran lightly past me and back into the building.

No, I wanted to say. No, I didn't know, though I could guess. And I was stunned.

If I was right, if she – no. No. I can't be right. There was no way – was there?

I tried to imagine her kneeling in the bathroom, crying tears of half-masticated food. It was just not possible. It was like cancer: it doesn't happen to people I know. But then again, neither does death, or so I once thought – and I had been so terribly wrong. 

Was she that sort? To throw up what little she ate? 

I didn't know – I never guessed. Though I should have. Empirically, it was not much different from that what I already knew, that about her refusing to eat normally. But with all the other implications factored in – now it was not just a severe diet. It was a sickness, a devastating, ravaging sickness.

Maybe I didn't understand as much as I thought I did after all. Not about her, not about myself. I felt so blind. I hadn't understood all the things she had told me. I hadn't understood her signals for help. I hadn't understood her constant sore throat. I hadn't understood her desperate need. I hadn't understood anything, though I had deluded myself that I did.

I was held with the conviction that it was imperative that I did something to help her. But I didn't know how to, or what to do. And I was afraid. Because, if I tried, would I fail? Was I inadequate? As useless as a boy-child before his sister, while a blade fell? 

I couldn't concentrate on the sword exercises that day. All I saw was the image of her, retching into the toilet, over and over and over and over again, like a tape played too many times, until it mixed in giddying eddies in my mind with the unyielding cold of the sword, and I fell horrified into the vision.

I never knew.

I never, never knew. Her. Of all people. Her. 

Arrogantly, I had thought I knew everything. I had always to be right. I had to be the best, the most. The most intelligent, the most hardworking, the most insightful, the most troubled. No one person was allowed to be smarter or in more pain than I was. I was too selfish to accept that I was not the single most hurt-filled person in my world. An unreasonable jealousy would emerge with the realisation that I was not, perhaps, the only person alive to have felt pain. Possibly it stemmed from an unquenchable need for affection, or maybe it was rooted in pride, because I could not admit that I was normal like all the people around me. I didn't want to be normal. I wanted to be special, to be superior. Perhaps it was all of that, or perhaps it was none of it. I couldn't say.

Now, Fuuko had forced me to see that I was not after all the best. I was not the most pained. The control I had over myself paled in comparison to the discipline she possessed. And I couldn't even pretend to be insightful and discerning. She had as good as told me she had an eating disorder, but I hadn't realised it. Not for all her tears, not for all her fears, not for all the uneasiness of her friends, had I been able to understand her desperate message. I was blind. I was blind. 

So many things I had believed about myself were falling to pieces. I suddenly felt pathetic. I was blind. I was not so amazing as I had believed. I was blind. My illusions about my brilliancy were dissolving into pieces in my hands and falling through my fingers. I was not who I thought I was. I was so much less. 

But I didn't care, not really. Because deep inside, I knew I had value. Not as much as I thought I did, but it was value nonetheless. I had a sense of my self-worth, I had self-esteem. Which was what Fuuko did not have. 

And without that, she had nothing.

**[Kirisawa Fuuko]**

Alone in my room again, I wondered why I had let him know I had just thrown up. It was a big deal to me, telling him that I purged. He already knew so much about me, and it made me uneasy. It was as if the secret parts of my heart no longer belonged to me, once they were known to another. And if nobody knew what I did, there would be nobody to judge me, and I would not be wrong. 

Perhaps I had needed that gratifying rush of release. Perhaps I had been unconsciously seeking help for what my rational mind insisted was not a misery but my soul insisted needed healing. Perhaps I had been too enchanted by that moment of revealing. I had worked so hard to become who I was, and I wanted someone to know what I had achieved. I had forgotten that I didn't even want people to know what I was. 

I realized that I had done what felt right at that time. It felt right, and it was therefore the only thing to do. Now I had to suffer for it, but because it had been right, so was the suffering. 

It wasn't as if he would do anything about it, anyway. Maybe he didn't even know what I was trying to tell him. Or, maybe he did, but it didn't mean anything. Because it really seemed that way, with all the stuff I had told him he hadn't given a damn about. He implied he cared. But he hadn't proved it. 

Okay, so maybe his inviting me to spend the summer with him proved it. Perhaps to him, this constituted "doing something for Fuuko". To me, though, what did it show? Not one damn thing. It was an empty gesture that had no meaningful purpose. 

I wrapped myself in the blankets. In the cool air-conditioned air of the room, nothing could be quite as nice as their comfort. 

Vaguely I realized I was being very disagreeable. I was in a Mood, and I felt guilty for snapping at Mikagami and felt horrible for revealing that to him. In a more lucid frame of mind, I would have had said nothing, done nothing. How easily my moods controlled me. 

Then again, who was I to expect anything from him? I was nothing – nothing to him. In his world, I had no meaning. He was so much better than I was. To hope that he would do anything for me was presumptuous, because I did not, I definitely did not, deserve any of the sort of kindness he was capable of. Not like Koganei, whose saving from Mokuren had been justified. Koganei was worth it; I was not. It was as simple as that.

I feel your breath on my skin. I feel you next to me. Your voice whispers in my head. You gather me up in your arms. My eyes are closed and I do not see. But I do not want sight. All I need now is the feeling, the heat and the sensation. I feel your skin, dry and clean, sliding over mine. Each small hot breath is measured, each red movement amplified. You are all around me. You are in my mind and in my head and on my skin. I am no longer a thinking being but a giant sensation. 

I open my arms to you.

And I feel only air.

The quickness of my breath shredding the darkness, I sat up in bed, arms and legs tangled in the sheets. All of a sudden a pain wrenched my heart and tears pricked my eyes. I knew, with absolute certainty, that there would never be an us, that there would only be him and me. I hunched over with grief, sobbing silently dry tears of sighs. 

Why, why were we never to be? Was he never to know love, he of that battered soul, who had a heart as pure as driven snow? Didn't he want to? 

He once said that the samurai was a machine. In the fight, all there was room for was precision and focus, or mistakes – often fatal – would result. There was no space in the life of a fighter for love or desire. The way of the sword required absolute dedication and complete devotion. There could be only that, and nothing else.

I could see why. Yet an inner part of me wondered, was he not a man, too? Men and women had other needs, than had a samurai. Men and women needed belonging and company and, most of all, men and women needed love. Was he not a man? Did he not need love? 

Desire screamed against the darkness. To feel him in my arms, right that moment, was the only thing that seemed right. But that night, as with all other nights, there was nothing in my arms. 


	11. chapter eleven

Chapter Eleven

**[Mikagami Tokiya]**

After that incident on the roof, we kept our distance from each other. There were so many things to say, we could not talk. So we lived that way, together but apart, each wrapped in our own universe. The apartment, so big for urban standards, seemed to shrink and grow smaller with the days, as we avoided each other. 

She never ate when I was around, and the only evidence she did eat was the slowly diminishing stash of salad leaves and vegetables in the fridge. If she ate anything else, it was in such minute quantities that I was not able to notice. Only once or twice did I realize she had eaten more than usual – it seemed like half the food in the kitchen was gone. A binge. It sickened me to think of her after that, regurgitating all the things she had consumed.

On one of her endless runs she must have noticed the library; most of the time she was holed up in her room with stacks of books, reading. Like my swordplay or my studying, books were her way of walling herself off from the world. Behind her hedge of words she was invincible. Nobody could touch her.

I hardly saw her. It was much less than was to be expected, seeing as we lived in the same apartment. When I did see her, what I saw scared me. She was noticeably shrinking; her clothes were growing looser. Her head took on the appearance of a skull as her hair thinned. Her skin, once smooth, pink and glowing, had become pallid and yellow. But what was the worst was her expression. Her eyes no longer looked lost and confused as they once did. They no longer looked terrified, or desperate. In her eyes was only an endless chasm of – of nothingness. 

The way she could suspend herself on the cusp of insanity frightened me. I looked at her and I was scared. And then, I realized, slowly I was growing to pity her. I began to be in awe of the person she had become. 

In her obsession she was approaching and going beyond a reflection of what I had been. She had a hunger for something that was as great as and larger than the hunger I had. She had control over herself that was as absolute and more than the control I had. She had become the person I once was. The person I once wanted to be. 

I struggled to understand. I checked out from the library books on anorexia and read them cover to cover. But it was no help. At the end of it all, I had gained so much knowledge on the disorder but no insight at all.

There were so many things it could have been. It could have been a silent protest against things like gender stereotypes, things like society's standards of beauty. It could have been a physical manifestation of a subconscious desire to return to childhood and its security. It could have been an obsession for self-control and self-respect, a need to fill a void where it existed. It could have been a perfectionism extended to an unrealistic degree. It could have been an outward symptom of extreme repulsion from her growing sexuality. It could have been the result of a warped search for an identity that mattered, or of anger taken out against herself. It could have been triggered off by some trauma, by overly-protective parents, or even a love relationship gone wrong – Raiha? It could have been all or none of these. 

These things made sense. But it was impossible to apply such clean-cut, objective logic to the muddle of reality. Because in the throes of her eating disorder it didn't matter to Fuuko why she had it; all that mattered was that she did. And that something in her ached for her to become more than what she was. 

It was such a pity, I think, mostly because she was so nice. We all felt it a great waste and a great shame that such a wonderful person was being turned into a shadow of herself by her consuming, uncontrollable eating disorder. She didn't deserve this to happen to her. She deserved much better. She deserved to be happy.

In all of my life I have only known happiness in the times when I have been loved. Even when I was too young to learn of it, when I could only vaguely feel its effects, I had realized instinctively it could not last forever. And I was right – it had not. But while in the midst of that horrible and wonderful darkness that consumed my life, I held on to those memories of unconditional love, and that kept me sane. Because I don't think I could have survived without the spirit of my sister giving me strength in my mind. Later on I drew on the love in the friendships of others to dispel the remnants of that darkness. I couldn't emote it, but I was grateful to them.

Now it was time to repay what had been given me. 

The moment I stepped through the door I was floored. It smelt like she had ordered take-out. The aroma was too appetizing – I was determined to have whatever it was for dinner too. 

I realized that though Fuuko had bought all that food, she would just throw it up after anyway. It was so pointless. 

Then I walked into the kitchen. 

I couldn't believe my eyes. 

"I didn't know you cooked," it took all the self-control I had to keep a straight face. 

She cocked a grin at me, "Sure I do."

She gestured to the table. "Sit down, it's almost done. Hope you haven't eaten dinner yet."

As I followed her directives, I noticed she only laid out one setting. 

"Not eating?" I asked quietly.

"No," she shook her head, "not hungry, thanks." There was sadness in her movements as she set the food out before me. 

"I feel really bad, you know. I didn't do anything for this meal." The entire tenor of my traditional upbringing would not allow me to accept a meal I had not worked for. 

"Oh, don't talk nonsense. You're putting me up in your place aren't you? Besides, I felt like cooking today. I warn you, though, it isn't very good."

"It isn't?" But it smelled so wonderful. I tried some of the soup. It wasn't all that bad. In fact it was rather nice.

"That's from a can," she pointed out. 

"So," I ventured, as she propped herself up beside me, "you cooked all this for me?"

She scratched her head. "I didn't cook it for you. I cooked it, and you just happened to be convenient. It isn't like I would cook all this for me, right?"

I shot her a long-suffering look. "Come on." 

Silence. She looked down and played with the grain of the table, avoiding my eyes.

"It's time we had a talk about this, Fuuko."

Immediately a flush spread over her peaked face. "You know I don't want to."

I ignored that. "I won't say things like 'you must stop doing this to yourself' or 'people care about you'. I think you've had enough of these trite sayings, and they don't mean anything to you."

"You're right," she said quickly, "so that's it."

"No. I'm not finished. Tell me, Fuuko, why?"

"Why what?"

I didn't reply, and she was quiet for a long time.

"I suppose you want to know why, everything. But I have to tell you honestly, I don't know. Sometimes it seems like I'm thin enough, and that there's no point torturing myself like this. And then I look around me and I see people skinner than I am. I see my classmates in school, girls on the street, I see you. I see all of you and I feel like crying inside. What I wouldn't give, I tell myself, for a body like that. What I wouldn't give."

"You do know that you're destroying yourself?"

She smiled wanly at me. "Do you think I'm stupid? Of course I do."

"Then?"

"Don't you know, yourself? If anyone else could understand me, it would be you. You know what it is to separate the body and the mind. If I control this one basic function, eating, I would be perfect. I would have control. I would be pure and flawless. What does it matter that this entails the destruction of the physical aspect? In your need for revenge you sacrificed youth. Is that so much different from what I do? In my need for perfection I sacrifice comfort."

"It is different," I insisted, "of course it is. You can put all those pretty words to it, beauty and restraint and things like that, and underneath it all is hatred – my hatred of a killer, your hatred of yourself – but it is different, precisely because of that. It is common to hate another, particularly when that person killed someone you loved. But to hate yourself – that is madness."

"What gives you the right to hate another person?" she asked slowly. "Who gave you the right to destroy another person? Don't you think that is rather self-centered? Just because you want to feel better, someone else has to be sacrificed. At least my hatred is directed against myself, and my destruction is only of someone who completely welcomes it."

She turned away and looked out of the window, out into the clear blue sky that stretched out away from us. "You know, Mikagami, I don't know why you bother. When I die, it wouldn't matter how fat or thin I was."

"So why are you…?"

"When I die, the body will not matter. The soul will. I don't know what sort of afterlife is waiting for us. Maybe there isn't one. But whatever it is, I don't want to give it a soul that has been pampered and spoilt. I want to remain of me a soul that is used, that has suffered and ached. Because it seems to me that it is that sort of soul that is actually worth having."

There was nothing I could think of to say to that and there was a long silence. Fuuko fluffed her hair out of her face as she played with her empty hands. Finally she got up to clear the plates, scraping her chair back. 

"It's difficult, this… you know how with a habit or a routine, the longer you keep doing it, the easier it gets? This is different. Every day I struggle with the hunger is worse than the day before. It never gets easier. When you're hungry in the morning it makes no difference whether or not you were hungry the night before. I can't look back over the past and say, 'I've been dieting for this many months' because that just wouldn't make sense. Each moment is a struggle. Because I am weak.

"Do you think I am weak, Mikagami?" she asked, her back to me. 

I almost said, immediately, No. But I didn't, because I thought she at least deserved an honest, thought-through answer.

Physically, she was not. Or was she? Her muscles, once hard and well toned, were wasting away. She was extremely sensitive to the cold, and suffered from joint pain and mild arthritis. Electrolyte imbalance caused slowed nerve conduction and muscular function, which made her enervated. She was often faint, and anaemia gave her constant dizzy spells. Dehydration dulled her; low blood pressure caused intense headaches. She was so depleted of energy, there were times she had difficulties walking and sitting, even. Certainly she was much weaker than she had been a year before.

Mentally, it was even less clear cut. Obviously extreme amounts of mental strength were required for her to maintain her disorder – to abstain from food when she was starving, to keep running when she was exhausted. At times, I felt, it was only her mental strength that kept her from collapsing. She was severely depressed, and had violent mood swings. She had no energy to think about anything other than food. She was preoccupied, obsessed. Was this strength? Was this weakness?

Her sense of self-worth was based upon the way she looked. Was this strength?

But I realized there was no way I could tell her she was weak, even if I did not really think so either. She would interpret it in the wrong way – it would only cause her to eat less, to exercise more, to do all the sorts of things I did not mean for her to do. 

"Do you think you are weak?"

"I – well – I don't know. Sometimes I think so, sometimes I don't. But – but I don't suppose it matters. Doesn't it? It doesn't matter if I am strong or weak. It just matters that I am."

"So what matters to you, then?"

She spread her fingers against the window. "This."

I frowned. "Glass?"

"No, don't be idiotic. This. Look. You can see the bones." I looked, and shuddered. Her hand was skeletal, the skin was translucent and pale, and her bones stretched out over her palm. I could almost see through her to the mountains beyond. 

"I'm sorry, but I think that's disgusting."

She smiled at me. "I think so too. But that's what matters, don't you see? It's not so much the result – the thinness – but the journey. The control, the tiny steps I take towards perfection. Knowing that I'm heading in the right direction. It doesn't matter when I get there, just that I am going to, one day. It's more than just thinness, more than just becoming thin. It's – it's everything. I am an artist, and this is my art."

I blinked. "But you – but you don't even have any energy."

She sighed. "No, I don't." Her fragile hands swept the limp hair fallen into her eyes as she pulled out a chair and sat down next to me. 

"And you aren't happy."

"No, I'm not. But… are you? Is Domon? Is Recca? Is anyone happy?"

"But – okay, point taken. Then, but – but what then is it that you feel? What do you go through? I cannot begin to imagine – "

"I don't suppose you could, could you? It's like - sometimes it's a deep melancholia, a terrible desperation. But most of the time it's just… emptiness. A paralyzing indifference. Even suicide doesn't seem appealing, because… it just doesn't matter. I would say 'nothing matters', but that has connotations of ideals, of romantic cynicism, of beautiful disregard. That isn't how I feel. 

It's like dryness. Blankness. And you're tired, so tired, but you don't go to bed, because you're too tired to move. 

"And I don't care. I don't care about anything, I don't care that I don't care. It's like being imprisoned within my brain. Because I can't be bothered to extend myself. I don't want to talk to anyone. Do anything. Apathy. _Blah_. I'm looking, but seeing nothing. Listening, but hearing nothing. Touching, but feeling nothing. Or – seeing, hearing, feeling everything, but nothing matters. Yet I know I should care. All the things I do then, I do because I know I ought to, rather than because I want to.

"I only want one thing, and that is – nothing. To exist in nothingness. Time could flow away into forever, and leave me standing here."

As she struggled to put words to her heart, I heard the echoes of the past resonate in the air, in the grain of the mahogany table I sat at. I felt almost as if I were listening to a younger version of myself speak. 

"I know you," I whispered softly so she could not hear, "you are me." But she wasn't, not really.

"Do you remember Fujimaru?"

"How could I not? He had a Fuuko fan club or something, didn't he?"

She blushed. "That's not why I remember him."

"He tore your clothes to shreds," I said, matter-of-factly. It had not been a big deal to me. 

She nodded. "I remember feeling only pissed off at him for being so disrespectful to a female. He was telling me that the only thing of worth about me was my body, that I was not a person, not an individual, not Fuuko, but a body. A 'chick'. Now when I think about it though, I doubt that, if it happens today, being rude would be the only thing I would be upset over."

"Oh?"

"I would be so embarrassed! I mean, exposing my fat ugly body for the whole world to look at? I can't imagine that I was not mortified then about letting everyone see how disgustingly pudgy I was!"

"I saw. But I didn't think you were, as you put it, 'disgustingly pudgy'. In fact I vaguely recall thinking that you had rather a nice body. If that happens today, I wouldn't have seen the healthy, shapely body I saw a year ago – what I would see is an emaciated, wasted cadaver."

She frowned. "Don't talk rubbish."

"I'm not. And you know it too. So tell me why you still starve yourself."

"Mikagami – I'm tired. I don't want to explain myself any more. I don't see the use. Why must I tell you all this? It isn't anything useful to either of us; we're not going to have better lives or anything if I do. Just let me be alone, okay?" She placed a hand on the back of my chair as she stood up.

I turned to look at her, and had only a moment to notice the way her side profile seemed to disappear in the light from the window before she stumbled. It was all I could do to somehow twist and steady her as she collapsed. It all happened really quickly.

"Fuuko!" I called, alarmed. For a moment she lost consciousness, and then she blinked dazedly. She frowned slightly, and her lips moved without sound. I looked into her eyes, her pupils were dilated and blank.

"Mika- Mikagami?" She struggled in my arms, so I let her down onto the floor.

"Are you okay? What happened?"

She shook her head, confused. "I don't know. All of a sudden I felt all strange and – woozy, like everything was tilting this way and that. I thought I was going to faint, so I grabbed your chair. Suddenly it seemed to be – really bright, as if all the colours in the room turned extra deep and green and yellow. And next thing I knew, I was falling down." She rested her head against the wall. 

I stood up to get her a glass of water. "How are you feeling now?"

"I don't know. Okay, I guess. Kind of strange." Her voice sounded weak from the floor.

"You want to go see a doctor?"

"A doctor? Whatever for?"

"You just fainted," I pointed out. 

She shrugged. "It happens," she said vaguely. "I'll be fine in a minute."

"You know why you fainted."

She shot a glare at me as I sat beside her. "Because I don't eat, yes?"

I took the cup from her trembling hands and placed it on the floor. "Well – "

"Everything happens because I don't eat, you know? That's the only reason anyone ever gives me," her tone was sarcastic. "I'm cold – because I don't eat. I'm tired – because I don't eat. I'm sleepy – because I don't eat." She looked out of the window. "It's afternoon now – because I don't eat. It's cloudy today – because I don't eat. It's ridiculous!"

I tilted my head towards her. "Well, it's true. Not the bits about the weather of course. But the rest is true. For example. Because you don't eat, you lack sodium and potassium in your extra- and intra-cellular fluids respectively. These are important chemical compounds that break down into their ions within the bloodstream. As a result of this electrolyte imbalance, your body cannot carry out homeostasis – the processes that keep the internal environment of your body constant. This manifests itself in several ways, one of which is a general weak feeling and tiredness."

"Are you done," she snapped. "I know all that already, Mr. Biology Teacher. You think an anorectic does not know about her own disease?"

"Your actions do not imply an understanding of how dangerous it is."

She pursed her lips. "I – yes, I know the physical implications."

"So?"

"So what?"

"So why do you keep doing it?"

A pause. "Because it doesn't matter."

Another pause, where it was right for neither of us to speak. Then I shook myself. "Okay, I think I had better put you to bed. Now is not the time to discuss such things. You think you can walk?"

She smiled. "Yeah, of course. I'm not an invalid you know. Just could you support me please?" 

"Okay." 

She was not an invalid now. But if she didn't do anything about it, soon she would be. Already I could feel the soft downy hair on her arms that was a symptom of advanced stage anorexia. 

Oh, Fuuko, what have you done to yourself? Why do you not listen to reason?

**[Kirisawa Fuuko]**

He sat by my bed for some minutes until I sent him out. It was the stuff romance stories were made off – damsel in distress, damsel swoons, hero rescues, hero loves. Real life, though, is not a romance story, and the hero would not love. 

I sat up in bed against the headboard, squeezing my eyes open and shut. That moment he had his arms around me, I had thought immediately of Koganei. I understood then what the boy had meant by feeling safe. It was as if all my frustration had drained away, and there was only joy within me. In that instant of semi-consciousness, I had been warm and secure and nothing could touch me, not even myself. I could feel the rich sinew of his arms beneath the cloth of his shirt, and I smelt the faint perfume of his body. His eyes had peered into mine for a moment, and it was as if the entire world existed inside of them.

"Damn you," I whispered, clutching my blankets to my cheeks. 

The sheets were soft and had a light clean scent of detergent. Like the pillow. Like the towels. A maid came in every couple of days to clean up, it was a service apartment. And it was beautiful. Carpets everywhere, glass everywhere, metal shining silver all the time. The interior decoration said two things: one, that the owner of the apartment had impeccably good taste, and two, that he had money. 

I thought of my own home. I slept on a futon on a tatami floor, not a plush bed with two sets of covers. I covered my windows with plastic blinds, not curtains (again, two sets). I wore clothes that I bought on sale, not tailored-looking designer dress. My family was not poor, but we were not rich. We lived within our means, very middle class. 

This room I lay in was definitely not middle class. I knew it was not meant to intimidate me, but I was intimidated. I had slept in it for so long, but still it was impossible to think of it as somebody's home, though it was. It was more like a hotel, and not just any hotel, a five-star luxury hotel. Sure, it was designed for comfort, not opulence, but it lacked that slight gaudiness and mess that I thought homes should have. It was too neat, too expensive, too classy for me.

And this was the world Mikagami lived in.

It was not mine.

What had I been thinking, going after that sort of guy? He was way out of my league. I was not good enough for him, even on this so superficial a level. Though I had no idea how an orphan like Mikagami had so much money, I didn't dare ask. At any rate, he obviously had more money at eighteen that I could ever in my entire life aspire to earn. 

Right then I longed to go home, to be back once more in the place I belonged in. Those bright cluttered streets I was familiar with, with the aunties in the doorways and the kids in the roads – that was my place. This, with its impersonal coolness and stiff politeness, was not where I belonged. 

I whimpered involuntarily. I felt so out-of-place and alone. Because for all of his kindness and generosity, Mikagami was meant for a girl better than me. For all the times he had obeyed my fractious commands and tolerated my will, he was the one to whom submission was due. Another cry escaped my locked heart.

Immediately there was a knock on the door. "Is everything okay, Fuuko?" His voice carried through the heavy wood.

"I – huh – er – " How had he heard me? 

He knocked softly and entered. "I don't think I should leave you alone." 

"You can hear me? What, were you pressing your ears to the door?"

"No," he said, looking slightly confused. "I was in my room. It's just next to yours."

I raised an eyebrow, incredulous.  "You can hear me through the wall?"

He shrugged. "Look, it's no big deal, okay. I've had training. Are you okay or not?"

"Sure I'm fine." This conversation was getting old. Are you okay? Yes I am. Is everything alright? Of course it is. Is anything the matter? No I'm fine.

He sat next to me on the bed, slipping out of his jacket and covered my shoulders with it. Such a gentleman.

I slipped it off, and read the label. "Yohji Yamamoto?"

He cocked an eyebrow at me. "What about it?" 

"Was it very expensive?" 

"Oh, this one wasn't too bad. Normally this brand is, because rather ironically he isn't all that well-known in Japan. But this particular piece was quite cheap." I almost laughed at that.

"Cheap? Meaning how much?"

"Well, er, I don't remember actually."

I shook my head. "You're really loaded, aren't you?" The unspoken question I left hanging in the air, he could sense it.

"Huh?… Oh. I see what you're getting at. Come on, Fuuko, I'm not a snob. It doesn't matter to me how much money people have. Besides, for years I didn't know I had all this money! And even if I did, it wouldn't have mattered. You know where I studied the sword: it was not the most luxurious of places, to put it mildly. I had to get used to living here too. Don't be silly. I'm not like that."

I shifted slightly. "Sorry." 

Saying these things didn't help. It – this money issue – was only one of the barriers that lay between us. 

The silence grew heavy, and I desperately wanted to say something interesting, so that he would not find me too boring to deserve his company.

"Was it really all that bad? It couldn't have been, could it?"

"What was?"

"You know… your dojo."

He frowned, his reaction surprising me a little. "I don't belittle you, Fuuko, so do not me. You do not know what my life could have been like. You could not have known." His voice was hoarse, and in his blank white eyes flashed the remnants of a past madness. 

"Sorry…" 

"You are proud of your anorexia, are you not? In that same twisted way, I am proud of my past. It has shaped me. It has made me. It is who I am. It is my life and my identity, although I exist in another world now. Do you not know how I hurt still?"

"I want to." But would he tell me? I was selfish with my experiences, and there was no reason to suppose he was not with his.

He shook his head. "I can tell you, but if you have not really experienced it yourself you can never understand," he said, "in the same way that I can never really understand what you go through.

"Have you ever had a friend you loved very much?"

I opened my mouth to say no, but I remembered a girl, three years ago, with an open heart, who gave without being given in return. I remembered a gift, and a farewell. [This is from a side story in the manga where some girl makes friends with Fuuko, who used to be quite a scary b***h.]

"I – yes. She moved away."

He looked away at the floor, speaking in a quiet voice. "Imagine, then, that you with her again. You spend so much time with her. You go out together, and watch movies together, and shop together, and do with her all the things friends do. You love her dearly, do you not?"

"Yes."

"And then one day after going shopping, as you walk home together, she sees something you don't. Behind you on the road is a bus heading towards you. There isn't a moment to lose. She throws herself at you and pushes you over to the sidewalk. 

"But, in saving you, she falls under the wheels of the bus and is killed."

There was a long silence. I bit my lip to keep from tearing. 

"Can you imagine the immense guilt that comes from having someone die for you? It is a great and terrible burden. Is my life more valuable, because it carries with it now the worth of two lives, or is it more worthless, because it has taken away that of another? I feel like I have a duty to – to do something, I know not what." 

He looked up at me. "This feeling is with me, every day, all the time."

"It is in everything you do."

"It is in everything I say."

"In every thought you think."

"In every face I see."

"In your heart."

"In my mind."

"It never goes away."

"It never lets me go."

"It never gives you rest."

"It never gives me respite."

"You will never forget."

"I will always remember."

"It is in your life."

"It is my life."

"Your burden."

"And your hunger."

His eyes searched mine as I searched his, as we spun in the enchantment we had woven. 

He looked away first. "But you do not know me," he said softly.

"Nor you, me."

He blinked, unreadable. "No." 

His face as he sat unmoving was blank, expressionless. Like it was when he fought. 

At the tournament, he was one of only two people who did not scream in an attack. Recca, for example, yelled as he went of the offensive, displaying his power in a none-too-subtle way. Mikagami never said a word, he just went straight at his opponent, silently, swiftly, effectively. The other person who fought noiselessly was Raiha. In him, it had been the mark of an assassin. But in Mikagami it was a mask. 

A mask he still wore. 

"Who am I to you, Mikagami?" I asked softly. "You never told me. Why are you so nice to me?"

"You are Fuuko," he said simply, as if it were enough, and smirked. "And I am nice." I frowned slightly, irritated with his everlasting implicit innuendoes. 

"Sure you are," came the automatic sarcastic reply, which he ignored.

"Say, I wonder – " he looked up at me, "don't mind if I ask, but do your parents know about this…"

"No. I don't want to tell them."

I turned away from his forceful gaze. "I love my parents, Mikagami. Like my mum, she's a simple woman, she works hard to keep the house nice and neat, and all that matters to her is her family. My dad, he loves us, he is in the office until late at night. Earning the money to bring up a family. My folks are fantastic. They would go through hell to put me through university and give me all the opportunities in life they can. 

"The least I could do for them is to not destroy their hopes for a wonderful daughter. I want to study hard and get into Tokyo U and later on find a good job and a good man and make them proud. I love them, Mikagami. I don't want to hurt them with all these – these little things. I want to be a perfect daughter."

I studied his expression. His eyes were closed, his breathing was even, and his face was carefully schooled – by habit – to show not a trace of emotion. But the knuckles of his clasped hands were white.

"Mikagami – " I tried. He flinched.

"I'm sorry." I realized how insensitive I had been to the boy without a family. 

His eyes opened slowly. "There's nothing to be sorry for." He shook himself. "Look, I personally think your parents should know about this. But I'm not going to make you tell them. It's your choice." 

He stood up. "I'm going out to buy some porridge. And you are going to eat it. Do you understand?"

I wanted to scream at him, but he had already left.

He must have been really pissed off.

The ten minutes I waited for him stretched into an interminable wait. With each moment, I grew more panicked. 

I couldn't. I couldn't eat. I'd already eaten enough for the day, the porridge would be above my quota. I could purge it after, but I doubted he would let me. 

Who knows what would be in that bowl? Tons and tons of oil and grease and calories, that's for sure. Sodium. Fat. All that. I could feel the flesh creeping back onto my bones already, and felt sick to my stomach. 

My breathing was shallow and terrified. I couldn't think of anything but the piping hot, fresh, steaming bowl of porridge. With chives and herbs perhaps sprinkled on the top, the aromatic fragrance diffusing into the room. With slivers of juicy chicken marbled through the rice. 

By the time he returned, I was almost hyperventilating.

He dragged me out of the bedroom, sitting me at the dining table. Before me was a Styrofoam bowl filled to the brim, the way I had imagined it.

"Now," he said, placing a spoon in my hand, "Eat."

I stared at the bowl. I could see the food. And I was conscious of myself sitting there. I knew what he expected to see – me dipping the spoon into the bowl and putting it to my lips.

But I couldn't.

It just didn't seem doable. It was as if it were physically impossible for me to let the food enter my mouth. I was Fuuko, and that was food, and never the twain shall meet. 

He sighed. "Put some of it in the spoon."

I skimmed the top of the bowl, watching the porridge accumulate in the cusp of the spoon.

"Lift it."

I did. And I noticed that my hand was shaking. I stared at it: the more I looked, the more it shook. 

"Kirisawa…" his voice was loaded with warning. 

"I'm shaking," I said, as if that were important.

I raised my head. "I'm shaking," I repeated. "Why am I shaking? I can't stop." I sounded more fragile than I meant to.

In an instant he was by my side. "Will you eat something? Please?" He leaned over me and took my trembling hand in his steady one. His left hand, his sword hand, felt rough from handling the weapon as it grasped mine. He raised the spoon to my mouth, and obediently I opened up. My mind was blank.

I ate.

**[Mikagami Tokiya]**

I had to do something to prevent her from throwing the food up again. So, when she was done, I immediately bundled her out of the house. "Let's go for a walk."

She was so weak I had to support her as we headed for the hills. I suppose she was able to walk by herself – I was pretty sure she still went for runs after all – but I thought it safer today. Besides, she didn't complain, and I could tell she was feeling too nauseated to say much.

What was I to do with this person who leant on me? I could not wait like this forever for her to save herself. But I could not help her either. The only thing that mattered to her was being thin. Nothing else did. How was I to do anything when she was this way? I was tired, tired with trying, tired with being put down, tired of living on the edge – her edge. I wanted to slap her and tell her to wake up, although I knew it would not do much good.

We were walking down a tree-lined hill when it started raining. Nagaoka is famous for its wet season, and in the summer it has an almost tropical-level rainfall. Water. One of the reasons I liked the place. I shook out an umbrella and held it over us. 

"Wait," she said. "Let's just stay here for a while. I want to watch the rain."

I walked her over to a stone bench, which I dried, and we sat. 

The road snaked on below us, turning after a ways and disappeared to the left. Trees, full and green, reached out to the sky and to us. Covered in droplets of water, roofed by a curtain of unbroken grey sky, walled by the green mist of the trees, I felt as if I were in some sort of cathedral. There seemed to be arches that soared high into the sky, and an expanse of space that spread out above and around me, and there was a sense of sanctity, of holiness. 

It was also cold and wet. But this rain was not miserable, as could be expected. It was strange, but the misery seemed to turn itself inside out and become something else altogether. 

There was a calm, a terrible calm. It was like the lulling moment before – before – 

I shook my head; it was not good to think such things.

"Mikagami?"

"Hm?"

"You remember once, last winter, you loaned me a trench coat outside the library back home?"

I thought for a moment. "No, actually."

"What size was it?"

"How would I know? The same as the rest of my clothes, I suppose."

 "The same as your Yohji Yamamoto jacket just now?"

I shrugged. "I guess so." I couldn't see what she was getting at and told her.

"When I wore the Yohji Yamamoto just now, did you think it was the right size for me? Or was it too big?"

"It was too big, obviously. Way too big." Pointless question.

But not to her. "That's wonderful! You see, the trench coat was my size then. And if it's the same size as the jacket just now, which was too large for me, then it means I've lost weight!" She beamed at me.

I raised an eyebrow. "Is this what all that was about? You were just trying to see if you'd lost weight?"

She shrugged, still smiling.

"You could just have asked, you know. I would have told you. You've lost weight. As if anybody couldn't tell."

Maybe not. Maybe she couldn't.

I took a good look at her, trying to imagine what she had looked like. It was difficult, and I finally realized just how much weight she had lost. A LOT.

Damn you, Fuuko, don't you realise what you're doing? I did a quick mental calculation. At the rate she was going she would disappear by next spring. By autumn she would have to be put on a drip and fed intravenously. In fact she should already be in a hospital. 

"Let's go," she said quietly. She stood up slowly, hanging onto my arm. 

"Just let me get my balance," she said. "I see stars when I stand up." Anemia. I waved a hand before her face; she did not notice, for her vision was masked by a curtain of spots. She leant heavily against me, putting all her weight on my shoulder. Her arms shook.

Everything inside of me raged at her. She was too young for this. She was just a girl. She was just a child. She was too nice. She didn't deserve this. She should have a happy adolescence. She should have a wonderful youth. Not – not this. 

I had to stop her. But how? If I was not quick about it, it would come too late. 

And then where would she be?

Where would I be?

**[Kirisawa Fuuko]**

He dragged a futon into my room and locked all the doors – the bedroom door, the bathroom door, even the door to the walk-in closet. "I'm not having you throw up," he declared.

I only shrugged. It was too late, at any rate. Twenty minutes past consumption and it would be impossible to get everything out again – much less hours after. 

But he was right, in that I would have tried. 

What was I to him? If I could only make him cry. Him – or anyone. Because that would mean I was important in somebody else's life besides my own.

I watched him go through his night-time rituals. He placed the Ensui, fully fleshed-out in all its icy brilliance, crosswise on the mattress and knelt before it. I wasn't quite sure what he did after that because I felt it wrong to intrude on that private moment. Then I heard the sound of water splashing into a tumbler and looked up. 

He was thinking of his sister again. His bowed stance had a heart-rending quality to it, a sadness I recognized from seeing all the time in his eyes. I had to bite my lip.

Was this what Meguri Kyoza had seen all those years? This was a different person from the indifferent, arrogant swordsman he was most of the time. This man – no – this boy was obedient, deferential, defeated. His hair, out of its ponytail, washed over his pale slender arms. This was no warrior completely in control of himself, this was a child who could not take care of his own life. 

Suddenly I could almost see him, half a life ago, sitting that same way on the wooden dojo floor. I could almost see the candles flickering in the night, and I could almost smell the fear and the dependence he had of his teacher.

Was this the boy who had seen his life die before his eyes? What he had become, and what he once was – these were not the same people. Not by far. 

Then he flicked his eyes up, and the spell was broken. 

"Good night, Kirisawa."

"Eat."

I trembled at the restrained anger in his voice. 

"Pick up the spoon. Eat."

I tried, but I could not touch it.

"Eat." 

He put the spoon in my hands and brought it forcefully to my lips. 

"Eat."

I could not but swallow. 

"Eat."

And again.

"Eat."

Stop, I wanted to cry out. Let me be, I do not want to eat any more. Go away. Go away. I don't want to eat. Please. Please let me go and get rid of this.

But, no, the command still came.

"Eat."

Please – please – please – don't make me – don't don't – don't 

"Eat." 

I tasted the food, going down my throat, going into my stomach, going into my body, sitting and staying on my stomach and hips and arms and legs. I felt myself expanding, expanding, until I filled out the jacket I was wearing, until it tautened, until it burst at the seams.

"Eat."

No more – no more – please don't – don't – don't – terrified – cannot – cannot – I cannot 

"Eat." 

NO.

And the voice was gone, diminished, falling from its dominance into a small crying child. He looked lost. I loved him. 

"Fuuko-neesan? Neesan?"

I shook my head. I loved him. But this was not a boy who would cry for me. Nobody would cry for me, because I did not mean that much to anyone.

"Neesan?"

He ran to me and hugged me, but the arms I felt around me were not those of a child, soft and chubby, but were those of a warrior, strong, slender, a warrior like Raiha, like Mikagami. I looked again at his face, and found not a human but a bowl, an empty bowl.

I ate all this???

I need to get it out! But the toilet is – is – I can't get in? It's locked. 

I can't – I must – I need – I – I – 

I twisted, and the covers fell off. I lay panting on the sheets, the food I had eaten sitting like lead in my stomach. I ran my hand over my abdomen, it felt rounded already. 

It was dark and I could not see. I could not think. I could not purge.

I remembered the pills on the bedside table. Sleeping pills, vitamins, laxatives, lozenges, slimming pills. 

Yes. Laxatives. Hadn't taken them in some time, but they would be useful. In the morning when I was free again it would all come out. 

Blindly I groped for the bottle. Where was it? Too many bottles – couldn't tell. Turn on the light? No, that would wake him. 

I felt a bottle beneath my fingers – no. Wrong one. Another – that felt like it. Or was it this one? They felt the same shape, size. No, it was the first. Yes. This one. 

With my shaking fingers I unscrewed the cap. How many? The label said maximum two, or four before a surgery, but I had relied on them once, and had been up to ten or eleven at a pop. I couldn't remember, not in the dark like this. It didn't matter. I threw one into my mouth, winced, swallowed. I threw in another, swallowed. Hated swallowing without water, but, there was no water. 

I lost count. It was a lot. Much more than I was used to taking, but my brain was too bleary too think. A couple more. Just to be safe. 

Oh dear, the bottle was empty. Never mind. It should work in the morning. In the morning. It would come all, all of it, in the morning.

I seemed to be sweating. Never mind. It would be all okay in the morning.

_Everything would be fine, in the morning._


	12. part fifth - in life this is no ending -...

Part Fifth – In Life this is no Ending – Chapter Twelve

The first thing he did when he woke up was to check on her. He had been awoken in the night by some noise, but it was just a nightmare she was having. 

"Shit!" By her bed were bottles of pills, bottles he had thought were harmless. They were knocked over, in a mess. He picked up one after another, and read the labels. All-in-One Vitamins – For a Woman's Daily Needs. A large bottle. Calcium. A medium size bottle. Dulcolax – Contact Laxatives. A child-proof cap on a medium bottle. Halcion – Sleeping Pills. Another child-proof cap on another medium bottle.

The last one was empty.

"What do you think you are doing?!" He leant over her, near enough to touch. His face over hers, his pale pink health contrasting her ashen yellow skin. Her bones shading her skin in a pall that reflected his colourless eyes. He couldn't have known she did not mean it.

"How can you give up just like this?" He reached out and shook her shoulders, his voice breaking and scraping over and over itself. "How can you give up now? What do you think you are doing?"

He squeezed his eyes shut, throwing his head back, as if in defeat. "Don't you know how hard I've tried? I didn't want you to end up this way! I tried, damn it, I tried. Am I useless? Am I useless, Fuuko? You tell me!

"Why didn't you stop before it came to this? Damn you, Fuuko, why didn't you listen? Why did you have to do this to yourself? Why did you have to do this to me?!" 

He took a deep breath, and slowly knelt by the bed. Beside the fragile body that lay in it. Beyond the light that shaded drained features and the shadows that pooled in the bones. Hands that trembled clenched the blanket. He gulped air in huge textured gasps.

"What did I do?" His words were drawn and pained. "Did I make you do this? I'm sorry! Dammit, I'm sorry! Are you listening? I'm sorry!"

He drew a hand roughly across his face. "Fuuko – "

He was crying.


	13. chapter thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

And that was not the ending, because these things in life do not end in these ways. 

He had to gather up all his strength to face his mistakes, because to him, he had wronged Fuuko as he had wronged his sister. Once again his world imploded inside of him but this time it was different.

Because she was not dead. 

And life goes on. In a book it would be the sequel. But life has no sequels because a sequel is a second chance – something life does not have. Life is long, and the ending does not come so quickly and so easily. Instead there is a tomorrow.

In the tomorrows, Fuuko awakes. Maybe she recovers. Maybe she does not. Maybe she changes her mind. Maybe she changes his.

And maybe, just once, she would get him to smile at her. 

And it would all be worth it.


End file.
